Gerry Heydt began painting landscapes outdoors to work in a direct and spontaneous manner. Her subjects include marine, coastal, suburban, mountain and garden motifs, concentrating on her home state of New Jersey’s natural areas, parks, and streets. She develops her large works and still life paintings in her Plainfield, NJ studio, using the color sense she attained from years of painting from life, both outdoors and with figures and still life in the studio. She started oil painting in her late thirties after working as a printmaker in etching and in stone and plate lithography.

Currently on the faculty at the Visual Art Center of NJ(VACNJ), Summit, NJ, and Somerset Art Association(SAA), Bedminster, NJ, Heydt teaches classes in outdoor landscape painting, beginning and intermediate oil painting, life drawing, and various workshop subjects including outdoor nocturnal painting, oil painting for beginners and outdoor landscape painting. She also teaches outdoor landscape painting in Cape May NJ, with the New Jersey Heritage Workshop series. Upcoming in 2008, she is scheduled for a solo exhibition in her hometown at The Plainfield Public Library, Plainfield, NJ. Her resume includes ten solo exhibitions and participation in over fifty group exhibitions in the tri-state area.

Gerry studied oil painting with Sam Adoquei at the National Academy of Design and the New York Academy of Figurative Art, and with Jim McGinley at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art. She has an MFA in drawing and printmaking from the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and a BFA in Fashion Illustration from Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri.