Noel Hefele

Some things I’ve been up to…

  • 5. Below Van Cortlandt Ave South Bridge

    5. Below Van Cortlandt Ave South Bridge

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    In this session, I found myself back at the Van Cortlandt Park South bridge. Yet, unlike before, my vantage point shifted beneath the bridge, immersing me in the pathway carved by IDA’s raging flood waters – the future route of the Daylighted Tibbetts Brook. I’m painting a landscape that is technically fenced off. But there…

  • 4. TJ Maxx

    4. TJ Maxx

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    Last Thursday, I returned to Albany Crescent, this time to paint directly above the highway. There, I was acutely aware of the fiery essence of this scene – a river-like flow of combustion engines, a stream of vehicles consuming oil. I spotted this particular parcel on livinglotsnyc.org. It is labeled Bronx block 2, lot 10,…

  • 3. Crescent Park

    3. Crescent Park

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    Yesterday’s painting session found me beneath the intermittent shade of a black locust tree along W 233rd Street, near Crescent Park. The sky was a vivid blue, the sun’s warmth a touch too intense. Thankfully, this spot offered both shade and an unobstructed view, unlike the fenced areas. Directly across the Major Deegan Expressway lay…

  • 2. Putnam Ave West

    2. Putnam Ave West

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    I returned to the site of the historic Major Deegan flooding and painted the largest watercolor I’ve done in some time. #DaylightingTibbetts is about inviting water in and it felt necessary to think in watercolors. The highway is also a river, but of oil. Oil and water don’t mix, but coexist, articulate in expressing their…

  • 1. Van Cortlandt Park South Bridge

    1. Van Cortlandt Park South Bridge

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    Yesterday, I positioned myself precisely where Tibbetts Brook is envisioned to emerge from Van Cortlandt Park, transitioning into the CSX rail line. Just the day before, this abandoned rail corridor had transformed into a raging river, a result of Ida’s torrential rains. Now, it lay calm—still damp, yet reclaimed from its brief life as a…

The Landscape Thinks Itself in Us

Painting the local landscape invites the community to deepen the lived experience within the landscape, one step among millions needed to repair our relationship to our environment.

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