Artist Statement
As we navigate through life, we constantly immerse ourselves in the landscape around us. Through the lens of art, we can explore this environment and strive for a more responsible ecology of place.
As we delve deeper into our understanding of the world, we come to realize that it is an intricate web of relationships. Dualism, the belief in a separation between the self and the environment, is a harmful oversimplification of our ecological experience. When we view the non-human world as mere objects, we remove ourselves from responsibility for our impact on the planet. We must remember that we are not the only subjects in the narrative of Earth. Our landscapes are intricately woven with the stories, trajectories and agencies of human, animal, plant, mineral, idea and thing. We are dependent on this landscape of things, alive and material, which in turn is dependent on us.
It is essential to consider where the individual ends and where the landscapes we inhabit begin. We live here together and I have painted you. My work is a collaboration with landscape to produce effects in myself and others, aesthetically and emotionally re-configuring ways of seeing the world.
Artist Bio
Noel Hefele is a landscape painter who was born and raised in Norwalk, Connecticut. He received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon in 2002, and later received his MA in Arts and Ecology from a university in England in 2010. He was then an Artist in Residence at the Barbuda Archeological Research center in the Caribbean in 2013 and 2014. Many private collectors own Noel’s work and he has exhibited both internationally and locally throughout his career.
In addition to his artistic pursuits, Noel also served on the board of a non-profit community arts organization PLGarts in Brooklyn NY from 2011 to 2017. Furthermore, he co-teaches a graduate level course at Brooklyn College called Human Tracks in the Urban Landscape.
Recently, Noel has moved to the Bronx just before the Covid pandemic changed everything. He is currently exploring Van Cortlandt Park and developing a new body of work.
If you have any questions or inquiries, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. This includes pricing or availability information.