Meet: Heather Dickinson
“I create, because my Father in Heaven creates. I am my Father’s daughter,” Heather says.
We love to celebrate and introduce you to graduates of our Foundations Art Ministry course.
These artists have put in a lot of work and we are extremely proud of them, grateful to have them in our God Loves Art community, and excited to see where God leads them next in their art practice and ministry.
May you be inspired by these artists and may you keep creating because God Loves Art!
Meet: Heather Dickinson
Botanical and nature illustrator, Heather Dickinson, 39, lives in Eastern Washington, and creates art primarily in charcoal and chalk. On occasion she enjoys mixed media–and has a particular fondness for acrylic metallic paint pens.
What art ministry is Heather involved with?
Heather shares regularly on her website, “Heather in the Blue Mountains” (http://www.
In addition to her website, she’s writing a book about “encountering [God] in our daily lives.” It’s a multi-faceted exploration of nature, faith, and art from Heather’s experience and personal relationship with God. “It’s part field guide, part explorer’s sketchbook, part visio divina, part teaching,” Heather says.
What is Heather’s creative process like?
When Heather works on her own personal artwork and art journals, it’s a lot more spontaneous than with her commissioned work. Dickinson says, “Since studying scientific illustration I’ve noticed there is more planning that goes into [work for others].” She takes her commissioned artwork opportunities seriously. Heather will make multiple “sets of sketches of layouts and ideas and then work with clients to isolate what features of a plant they want to have displayed.”
As a single mom and a teacher, Heather is a busy woman–“I create whenever I have a chance,” she says. She prefers creating “mid-morning if I don’t have classes,” Heather says, or in the afternoon, or even, she says, “evenings after the kids are in bed.”
Working outside is important for her natured-inspired studies and artwork. She goes hiking often since “‘in situ’ is best for botanical studies,” Heather says. And Dickinson loves it “because my kids tag along with their own art and science kits, and so it becomes a family affair.”
Why does Heather create?
Heather says, “I can’t… not… create.” For as long as she can recall, she’s always felt compelled to create. This “urge to create,” she says, looked like being “inspired by the things I saw in my world [and then] I had to recreate them with drawings or words.” Heather believes she “was always wired to see more, hear more, feel more.”
Recalling a memory as a five-year-old, Heather remembers “sitting for hours outside in my grandmother’s horse pasture, drawing the horses.” And throughout all of her school days, she remembers keeping creative materials and tools nearby. “I lived with a pencil behind my ear and a notebook of blank paper in my backpack,” she says. For Heather, creativity has been a way of life for most of her childhood and teenage years: “If I wasn’t reading a book or doing homework, I was drawing and journaling.”
But, there was a period of time from teenage years through college, in which art didn’t play as present of a role. “I walked away from art,” Heather says. “I had confided my dreams of being an artist to the wrong people and they demeaned it and cut me down pretty hard.” For fifteen years she went without the gift of art because of the discouragement that came from sharing her desires with unsupportive people. During this time she achieved a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in English and also pursued studying music which felt “more acceptable” she says, than the creative pursuits in art she longed for.
She felt this loss and gap left from not creating the art she wanted to for many years. Then, in 2017, so much change came along in Heather’s life.
Her marriage began to fall apart and she sought after God in earnest. “It was like a fire had been relit on the inside of me,” Dickinson says, “Art made sense when so much else didn’t.”
“I create, because my Father in Heaven creates.
I am my Father’s daughter.”
With this renewed sense of herself as an artist, in 2022, she had a powerful encounter with Jesus that changed her perspective about her identity and purpose as an artist. “His eyes — there is nothing like them,” Heather says, “He looked right inside of me, and then I felt Him handing me tools. Drawing tools. Rolls of paper. I knew in that moment He was calling me as an Artist. I came out of that encounter changed. Art wasn’t just something I was doing to make a few bucks on the side or keep myself sane amid life’s stresses… it had a Purpose. I had a Purpose, an Identity, and He had given it to me. I think there’s no better reason to create than that. I create, because my Father in Heaven creates. I am my Father’s daughter.”
Encouragement from Heather Dickinson:
The best advice she’s received as a creative is to “Experiment. Try out everything, all the mediums you can get your hands on,” Dickinson says. “Explore what you like and dislike, and run toward the things you like. Over time, you will learn where your strengths are, you will learn what really inspires you, and you will learn which medium you love best, which sets you up to make art that’s authentically You.”
Heather adds, “Don’t be quick to discount mediums you don’t like — I went around and around and around with different mediums for the better part of seven years, and it turns out my favorite medium is charcoal, the very medium I brushed off and disliked early on for being ‘too messy’ and ‘incapable of precision.’ (That’ll teach me!)”
To find out more about Heather Dickinson’s work and to be encouraged by her even more, please visit her here:
http://www.bluemtnheatherarts.
Heather invites you to sign up and receive an email notification whenever she posts something new. With several options of free and paid memberships to be part of the community as well as making links available to purchase merchandise like coffee mugs and prints of her nature artwork.
Nature provides endless joy for Heather. Taking artistic inspiration from Da Vinci’s journals and Albrecht Durer’s botanical sketches, she’s also enjoying the book, Explorer’s Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery and Adventure by Kari Herbert and Huw Lewis-Jones.
Archaeologists and their journals documenting their experiences fascinate Dickinson, too. Particularly, Joel P. Kramer, from “Expedition Bible” on Youtube and watercolorist Gordon Wetmore in the book, Promised Land, are both “fueling this desire to travel overseas to make art,” she says.
Foundations Art Ministry Course graduate, Heather loves the advice that, artist and scientist, John Muir Laws offers about “pencil miles.” She says it’s “the understanding that even though you aren’t where you want to be now, eventually you will get there — the more pencil miles you accrue, the more your skills grow, and the more your skills grow, the better you get at drawing.”
Not yet a graduate of Foundations of Art Ministry?
Find out more here.
Heather Dickinson is a graduate of God Loves Art Foundations Art Ministry Course, led by Jessie Nilo.
Heather Dickinson says, “Since going through Foundations, I have learned so much about what art ministry is, and honed in on what MY particular ministry with art is. I went in not sure how God wanted to use my particular kind of art to build His kingdom, and came out with a very strong sense of its role and design. I came out feeling validated as an artist, and equipped to step into using art to minister to others.”
Heather says that as an instructor and mentor in Foundations, Jessie is, “Bubbly, kind, and gracious! Jessie is wonderful. She has a great way of explaining things and is a wealth of wisdom.”
Thank you for joining us for this installment to share about graduates of our Foundations Art Ministry Course. Artists like Heather Dickinson have put in a lot of work and we are really proud of them, glad to have them in our God Loves Art community, and excited to see where God leads them next.
Not yet a graduate of Foundations Art Ministry Course?
Click here to find out more.
About Author + What is GLA
Molly Ovenden is God Loves Art’s Customer Service Representative and Community Manager. When she’s out in the wild making art you might find her writing poetry on her vintage typewriter for new coffee shop friends, photographing lines or textures in the streets, or experimenting with acrylics and collage.
Meet the rest of the team here.
You were born highly creative. Everyone around you was born creative, too. By the time they’re adults, most people believe they’re not creative at all. Let’s listen to God together. Art is important, so let’s get creating. God Loves Art.