NEW YORK—Brooklyn-based painter Julie Heffernan, who has a solo show up at P.P.O.W. in Chelsea through October 20, creates fantasy worlds derived from nature, art-historical references, and dream symbolism—and peppered with doses of the grotesque. Willowy figures move among rococo abundance (fleurs de lis, vines dripping with flowers and fruit) and signifiers of death and decay (rats, animal carcasses), all painstakingly rendered in the muted palettes of the Dutch Masters.

Heffernan’s Brooklyn studio, though far removed from the hazy fantasy worlds she paints, does offer a certain kind of abundance: that of a typical American basement. ARTINFO spoke with her about working amid 15 years’ worth of junk and what she does to escape.

“My studio is in the basement of our house,” says Heffernan. “That means sharing space with all the tools and bicycles and badminton rackets we’ve accumulated over the past 15 years, which now and then I trip over while I’m painting.

“From my studio couch I can see out of one small window into the backyard. I realized I needed to create an escape from my self-imposed underworld, so I built a folly out there with a six-foot waterfall—I can see and hear it when I need to space out while I’m working. The pond has fish that I never feed and that have survived five winters. Now they’re enormous.

“When I look out that tiny window I feel like I’m in Peru.”