"I'm A Happy Camper"
by Barbara Coyner
Art of the West • Jan/Feb 2006
On a perfect autumn day in Scottsdale, Arizona, Dick Heichberger temporarily trades his brushes and oils for a hammer and nails. Teaming up with his brother Bill, he hangs sheetrock, coaxes wiring into place, and practices the attention to detail that his father instilled in him as a boy. Now almost 61, Heichberger regards the extensive home remodeling job as a special work of art for his 29-year-old daughter, Heather.
“The house is cuter than a button,” Heichberger says, adding that Heather lives only four miles from his home and studio. “I feel so blessed, so content with my life. I’m a happy camper.”
Heichberger handles color, composition, and light like a pro in his artwork, but he’s no rookie as a builder either. Fortunately the two pursuits overlap, allowing the Eden, New York native to flex his creative muscles with either a hammer or a brush. “I’ve always loved to build things and work with my hands,” he says. “In painting or building, they always insist that you have to enjoy problem solving, but I don’t see things as problems.”
An avid outdoors man, Heichberger experiences what he paints firsthand: the bite of a snowstorm, the amber light of early dawn, and the ways of the animals as they hunt for food. That bone-deep knowledge of nature allows him to inject an unmistakable majesty and grandeur to his landscapes, a woodsman’s reality to his settings.
“I’m a great fan of 19 th century landscape painters like Fredrick Church and Albert Bierstadt and, when I look at their paintings, I see a certain glowing light,” Heichberger says. “As a sportsman, I often see that same kind of light, and that time of day just does it to me. When I am out there, I get an idea, and the momentum gets going. I really get involved. I’ve always hunted and fished, and I used to run a trap line when I was young. When I’m outdoors backpacking or fishing, I am always looking for new places. With painting and the outdoors, it seems that one is conducive to the other.”
As a kid, Heichberger roamed the woods of rural New York, bucked hay bales for his Uncle Joe, and watched as his family members farmed with horses and lived simply. He wasn’t interested in art until his seventh grade class visited an Andrew Wyeth exhibit at the Buffalo Museum of Fine Art. “I was so taken by that show that I told myself that someday I wanted to paint beautiful pictures like that,” he says.
Heichberger’s father, who worked for the local telephone company, had somewhat similar aspirations for his son, hoping that he might become a gun engraver. “I never have done that but I did like to carve as a boy,” Heichberger says, adding that he also enjoyed black-and-white photography. Following his graduation from high school, he entered the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, but by 1965 the Vietnam conflict put his art aspirations on hold.
Heichberger joined the Marines, working on helicopter crews while serving tours in Vietnam, Cuba, and Panama – and collecting a kiss on the check from actress
Ann-Margret during a USO tour. In 1969, following his discharge, Heichberger reenrolled at Santa Ana Junior College, intending to go on and earn a degree in wildlife and forestry.
“Around that time, my mom came out and brought some watercolors I’d done years earlier,” Heichberger says. “I’d just gotten married and there was a little gallery nearby, so I started painting again. The guy told me he’d buy everything I could paint for him, so I painted depots and farmhouses, and he paid me in cash. I had a little yard service and was getting by on the GI Bill, and this guy was paying me $25 to $45 a painting. Heck, I thought it was the easiest money I’d made in my life, and this was great. I was doing pen and inks and coloring them with watercolors. Then one day I saw a man walk out of the gallery with one of my paintings, and the price was over $200. It was double matted, in a nice frame. I’d never seen one of my paintings like that before.”
With a boost in confidence, Heichberger got his next break when he met local artist Dave Solomon and was juried into the Laguna Art Festival. “Meeting Dave was great, and I ended up getting involved with the festival,” he says. “Things just took off from there and pretty soon I ended up moving to the mountains.”
The San Bernadino Mountains and Big Bear Lake provided just the incubator Heichberger needed for his art. The birth of his daughter in 1976 was a major highlight for the artist, but four years later he and his wife parted company, and he took on the role of single parent. It was a role he tackled with energy and, as Heather grew up, the father-daughter team headed to the woods to hunt, fish, and explore.
“When she was growing up, sometimes her friends would ask her if her dad could cook, and she would brag about my quail and rice,” Heichberger says. “She fly-fished with me and we still hunt quail together.”
In between painting watercolors, exploring the outdoors, and building cabins at Big Bear, Heichberger taught art at the local junior college satellite campus for 17 years. A friend also connected him with Disney Studios, and threw together a hasty portfolio for an impromptru interview. “[The Disney people] had just done the screening for Roger Rabbit,” he recalls. “When the showing was over everyone came out and the art director had my work set out on the table. People looked at it and got all excited and they hired me on the spot.”
Heichberger admits to savoring that delicious moment before getting down to the real work of mastering an airbrush and working in the animation industry. Before it was over he would list jobs for Warner, Landmark, Fox and others on his resume.
As the 21 st century dawned, Heichberger saw the sun set on his steady work with Fox. By then he was settled in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the time was right to give animation and watercolors a rest and try his hand at oils. “It took me about three years to paint like an oil painter,” he says. “I got a feel for it, started to show, and things started selling like crazy.”
Scott Christensen’s teachings on color were a major influence on Heichberger. “I use a very limited palette of three or four colors and they’re all related,” he says. “It’s great when it all comes together. I think about the color and the design and, after a while, I know where I’m going. I can see it. The really early stages of a painting are fun, and then you come back and tweak things and make it all come together. I usually put the piece away for a while and have about five to eight paintings going at a time. I study them and, if it’s not quite right, I can go back. That’s the joy of oil; you can go back. With watercolor, there’s a certain amount of control, but there are often what we call happily little accidents.”
Quick to point out that he hasn’t entirely abandoned watercolors, Heichberger still appreciates the look and appeal of that medium. “Some things I see as watercolors, others I see as oil paintings,” he says, confessing that he’d like to sculpt sometime in the future as well.
Not limited by notions of what sells and what doesn’t, Heichberger freely indulges his love of the outdoors and his enthusiasm for life as he paints. Recently, he’s entertained the idea of buying a recreational vehicle with both a living space and a compartment for an ATV and using the extra space as a portable studio. There’s plenty of appeal in going to the country and staying there, he says. For a self-proclaimed “happy camper,” the arrangement appears perfect.
“Life is just a bowl of cherries,” Heichberger says. “My friend say I’ve turned into a workaholic, but I’m having more fun than I ever dreamed.”