Heath Gallery is honored to present STILL HERE, the first solo exhibition of artist Phoebe Ploom. Phoebe is a psychiatric nurse and folk artist who began painting in earnest after her father, born in 1926 in North Carolina, shared late-life stories of racism and survival. Those stories, long silenced by shame, became the inspiration for what she calls her “heritage paintings”, bold, mixed-media works rooted in memory, resilience, and the everyday rhythms of Black life. Influenced by Picasso, Basquiat and Bill Traylor, Phoebe’s colorful, textured paintings honor the past while speaking directly to today’s moment, when history itself is under attack.
