July Shifting Planes is an intuitive abstract landscape created by David Heatwole under his D. J. Priest signature while working on the road as a professional truck driver. The painting was made within the unusually confined space of the bunk area of his Volvo tractor, where the truck itself periodically became an improvised studio.
The work brings together suggestions of landscape and natural form with the shifting visual relationships that recur throughout Heatwole's abstract practice. Shapes, colors, and passages of movement appear to overlap and interact, creating a space that can seem recognizable at one moment and uncertain at the next.
That ambiguity reflects Heatwole's continuing interest in energy, perception, and the connections between seemingly independent things. Rather than describing a specific landscape, July Shifting Planes allows the image to emerge through an intuitive process, leaving room for the viewer to discover forms and relationships within it.
The circumstances of its creation add another layer to the work. Made while Heatwole was living between the demands of the road and his need to continue creating, the painting transforms a remarkably restricted physical space into a place of imaginative freedom.
