Artist Rewarded for Presidential Ambition : Art: Unsolicited work of Clinton was accepted by the White House and will hang in the headquarters of a federal agency.

To some viewers, Jane Heyman’s portrait of Bill Clinton might seem to be a satirical jab at the President for his peripatetic positions on such issues as taxes and gays in the military.

The contemporary painting, made from a photograph of Clinton taken during the $200 Cristophe haircut fiasco, is titled “The Three Faces of Clinton.”

But the work is intended as a tribute; Heyman, a Culver City resident, is a huge fan of the President. So shortly after completing the portrait last March, she offered the 24-by-48-inch work--unsolicited--to the White House.

And the White House accepted. The piece now hangs in the lobby of the Corporation for National and Community Service headquarters in Washington, an agency created in October to promote social service projects.

“I love the new (Clinton) Administration,” says the classically trained painter, represented by Gallery Rodeo International in Beverly Hills. “I used three images because I think Clinton is working three times harder than any other President to make things happen.”

The message got through to Rick Allen, an assistant deputy to the President, who wrote her after receiving her offer: “The picture is outstanding. . . . We knew the President watched over us; now he does in triplicate! Thanks so much. Letter from the boss to follow.”

Heyman plans to attend an official unveiling of the portrait in Washington. No date has been set, but Allen says the President, who has not yet seen the painting, will probably be in attendance. Understandably, Heyman’s a tad giddy about the prospect.

“Oh, I don’t know what I’ll wear,” she said. “Probably a Madonna outfit. Sexy or conservative? It’ll depend on how I feel that day.”

A native of New York and a ‘40s baby boomer, Heyman painted war victims and street people during her training at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn some 20 years ago. She says she was strongly influenced by the abstract impressionist works of Henri Matisse and Francis Bacon.

She became an established artist in New York but moved to Los Angeles in 1984, where she took a job as a legal secretary for a year until she could become a recognized painter here. It was during her breaks as a secretary that she began creating laser images with a copy machine, later turning them into paintings. Los Angeles’ ubiquitous celebrity adulation quickly became the subject of her multimedia, technology-driven work.

“L.A. is a place where people worship cars, celebrities and things,” says Heyman, whose celeb clients include James Woods, Ally Sheedy, Ben Stein and Jay Bernstein.

“Everyone in L.A. is an actor or something. I have friends in L.A. who look more like an artist than I do, and all they do is spend the day getting dressed. So I stopped painting Fauvist paintings and began painting celebrities, their dogs and their families. A good artist is a reflector of society.”

Heyman, who sells her paintings for $800 to $5,000 and is showing them at Nathanson’s Photography in Santa Monica, works out of a studio off Olympic Boulevard in West Los Angeles. There, the walls are adorned with serial paintings of John F. Kennedy (in progress), Madonna and Oliver North.

In the painting of North, she used a media photograph of him being sworn in during the Iran-Contra hearings, making his facial expression metamorphose through nine frames, from deadpan in the first, to faded, fearful--almost cadaverous--in the last.

Playing off religious associations and pop idolatry in another work, Heyman used a Renaissance painting of the Madonna and child, inserting a photograph of pop-diva Madonna into the lap of the Virgin Mary where the infant Jesus traditionally sits.

You might say Heyman’s Los Angeles art career started in earnest during a sweaty encounter with the pop star in 1984, a meeting that resulted in the sale of her first painting to Freddy De Mann, Madonna’s manager.

“I met her in the sauna at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna in 1984 and I said: ‘I have a painting of you,’ and she said: ‘Bring it to my manager’s office,’ ” Heyman recounts.

“So I took it there and left it there. It was a painting of an angelic Madonna, like something you would see in the Getty Museum. That was before she tried to sexually liberate the world.”

Despite such success, celebrities dominate Heyman’s work and life less and less these days, she says. Her work, she says, now reflects society’s shift from “the ‘80s Me Generation to the ‘90s family values.”

“What’s happening in my work now is people being connected to others, whether it’s through dogs, love or a baby,” she says. “It started when my sister’s baby was born with a heart defect and we didn’t know if he was going to live. I painted him after the operation was successful to match the colors of my sister’s yuppie New York room.”

Indeed, the Clinton portrait is also a product of Heyman’s new focus on changing times.

The inspiration, she said, came last March at the Beverly Hills Country Club during a private show of her work. Heyman was gushing Clinton’s praises to a patron, who suggested she express her effusions in art. So moved was Heyman, she says, that she dashed home to paint the President, using a news photograph taken of him after he had received his infamous haircut on Air Force One.

“I’m not very political,” says Heyman, explaining that she chose the photograph for Clinton’s commanding, “21-gun salute” expression.

“During the Vietnam era, all I did was stay in my room and listen to the Beatles. I was never big on getting beat up. But Clinton gave me that sense of hope that Kennedy gave me. ‘The Three Faces of Bill’ can be taken (as commentary on his ever-changing positions on issues), but I’d like to plead the Fifth (Amendment) on that and leave it up to the viewer.”

The work, made in a Warholesque process of laser and painting, is a bit untraditional to be the official White House portrait. But presidential aide Allen, who lived in Pacific Palisades and is familiar with Heyman’s work, said it’s apropos for the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Allen said the agency has outgrown the building it is sharing temporarily with three other federal agencies and will be relocating soon--the portrait in tow.

“One of the reasons we wanted (the painting) is because we’re a new outfit with a very young staff, and although the organization is for Americans in all seasons of life, it is mostly for college-age people. We wanted something that was hipper than the stuff you see of the President in post offices and other federal buildings.”