The Art of Beate Heinen

My husband’s parents live in a small town on the Rhine that is about 5 minutes away from Bingen, from whence cometh the famous St. Hildegard of Bingen. (Hildegard founded the order in Bingen in 1165.) While the original abbey is no longer standing, there is a rebuilt and utterly gorgeous Benedictine abbey, now named St. Hildegard abbey (naturally), standing near the original location (albeit on the other side of the Rhein), up on a hill overlooking the Rhine valley and surrounded on all sides by vineyards. When my husband and I were there for Christmas, we stopped by the abbey and there in the gift shop I discovered works and postcards by one Ms. Beate Heinen, a German artist hitherto unknown to me.

As it turns out, Ms. Heinen spent her novitiate years at St. Hildegard before going to Switzerland to learn painting with several well-known surrealist artists in the mountains. Eventually she decided not to become a nun, and settled in Bonn to work as a professional artist. (You can read the full biography (in German) here.) Ms. Heinen has since been producing biblically-themed paintings as well as commissions in churches around the country.

Of course I can’t include all of her wonderful paintings in this post, and I am, alas, not qualified to talk intelligently about art. So I encourage you to do a Google images search for Beate Heinen, or to check out the images in this gallery – where you can also order the postcards. Enjoy!