Bare Trees: Carol Heft

Carol Heft lives in both Manhattan and Bethlehem, PA, and teaches in both cities. Because of this, she spends a good amount of time commuting back and forth on the bus. She has a marvelous series of gestural landscape drawings completed during her bus rides. As she moves quickly past her subjects, she's got to work rapidly, intuitively, and partially from memory. 

Carol Heft is a member of New York's Blue Mountain Gallery, but the community of artists she has found on Facebook has been especially vital to her. She enjoys sharing her work on Facebook, and finds the artistic community there inspiringly democratic. Her Facebook page is the best place to keep up with her sublime series of drawings she calls "Landscapes from the Bus Window", as well as her paintings and sculpture. 

Here are just a few of my favorite Carol Heft "bus window" drawings that include densely tangled, spontaneously drawn yet beautifully composed groupings of leafless winter trees:

This morning 2.18.14

This morning 2.3.14

12.23.13

This afternoon, 1.9.13 from NYC to Bethlehem PA

If I am present for my drawing, the drawing will have presence.

- Carol Heft (in her interview with Lynette Haggard)

You can see more of Carol Heft's work at Blue Mountain Gallery and at her Facebook page.