Artist Vicky Heller: A Love Letter to Fire Island in Watercolor
PROFILE
From London to Fire Island: The Art of Vicky Heller
If you’re an early riser on Fire Island, there’s a good chance you’ve seen her: a familiar figure jogging through the Grove, the Pines, the Meat Rack, or the Sunken Forest — some of her favorite places on the island.
Her name is Vicky Heller, an artist who is as well-known as she is loved in two of Fire Island’s most iconic communities: Cherry Grove and the Fire Island Pines.
Vicky has spent every summer in Cherry Grove since 2008. And while the Grove is her home base, the Pines is another place she loves dearly. In fact, she visits her friends there almost every single day.
Vicky was born and raised in London and now lives in Chelsea, Manhattan, but when summer arrives, she heads back to the place she has come to love so much that she says she simply can’t imagine living in the United States without spending her summers in Cherry Grove.
18 summers in Cherry Grove
Over the years, she’s had several homes in the Grove. She first lived on Surf Walk, on the west side of the community. Then came a short stay at Pride House, the oldest house in the Grove. And for well over a decade now, she has called a beach house on the east end home.
But Vicky isn’t just a familiar face on the island. She’s a professional artist, creating artwork for the fashion and home-furnishings industries. Her specialty is watercolor — and that passion for detail would eventually lead her to take on what may have been one of the most ambitious artistic projects imaginable on Fire Island.
In 2023, Vicky decided to paint a map of the entire Fire Island Pines.
The idea came from a simple observation: there really wasn’t a detailed map of the Pines. So Vicky decided to create one herself — and not just a map showing walks and buildings. She wanted to paint every single house.
And knowing Vicky’s obsessive attention to detail, that meant she wanted to get everything right — from the architecture of each home to the color of the trees, and even the color of individual swimming pools.
What started as a self-assignment quickly became a monumental undertaking. Vicky jokes that the project almost killed her.
The Pines is a big community, and painting it house by house, detail by detail, took months of painstaking work. But eventually, she finished.
And in 2023, she brought her enormous watercolor — an impressive 80 inches long — to the Art Show at Whyte Hall in the Pines.
It was a huge success.
Vicky was thrilled with the result. And that success inspired her to take on another community close to her heart: Cherry Grove.
This time, she painted the place where she has spent so many happy summers, surrounded by friends — including her dear friend and fellow Brit, Keith Starkey with whom she has shared a house on the island for many years.
Vicky describes that painting as another labor of love. But compared with the Pines, she says, it was a little easier simply because the Grove is a smaller community.
Together, the two paintings have become much more than maps. They are portraits of two beloved Fire Island communities — and for many people, they are a way of seeing their own little piece of paradise preserved forever.
Every house, every detail, immortalized in watercolor.
And Vicky hopes the paintings will continue to bring people joy long after she is gone. As she puts it, hopefully people will still buy the maps, look at them, and see the houses they love so much.
Each map takes months to complete.
NEXT: A Map of the Meat Rack
And Vicky is already at work on her next project: a painting of the Meat Rack.
This one, she says, comes with a special responsibility.
The Meat Rack is a deeply meaningful place for so many people on Fire Island, and Vicky says she wants to do justice to it — and treat it with the respect it deserves.
Her maps are available through her ETSY shop, giving Fire Islanders and visitors alike the chance to take a little piece of these communities home with them.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/VictoriaHellerStudio
FUN FACTS ABOUT VICKY
Vicky came to New York in 1995 because, by her own admission, she was partying a little too much in London. She planned to stay for just two weeks but she never left.
While out at a nightclub, she met a couple of guys who worked at Calvin Klein. They helped her get a job, she got a visa — and the rest, as they say… well, you know!
And honestly, aren’t we all glad they did?
Vicky’s London connections also include a rather colorful character who would go on to become internationally known: Aidan Shaw, the former porn star who later in life became a fashion model and gave his name to a character in Sex and the City.
In the Pines, Vicky developed another close friendship — this time with renowned DJ Lina Bradford.
Then there’s her extended Fire Island family: Stevie, Chris, and the whole crew at the Pines Liquor Store, where Vicky is a regular.
So regular, in fact, that her friends have given her visits there their own name: “Vicky Tea.”
She has also designed many of the T-shirts sold at the store.
So if you see that familiar figure running through the Grove, the Pines or the Sunken Forest early in the morning, now you know who it is.
It’s Vicky Heller — artist, mapmaker, Londoner, New Yorker, Fire Island lover… and perhaps above all, someone who has spent years turning the places and communities she loves into works of art that can be treasured for generations.