Carol Heft

"The more mature I become as an artist, the more I like to let the work tell me what to do - which means it is a very interactive process. Every mark changes the whole thing, so I spend a considerable amount of time looking, imagining, pretending, visualizing, trying things out, and revising. At a certain point it becomes clear that something is finished, it snaps into place in a sense."

Carol started painting and drawing at 12 years of age when she studied with Robert Brackman, N.A. at his summer school in Madison Connecticut. While there, Carol became grounded in the European academic traditions of figurative painting, a foundation which gave her skills and ideas which stayed with her throughout her career as an artist and teacher. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design in the mid 1970's where she came in contact with Leland Bell, Fairfield Porter, Louisa Chase, Judy Pfaff, and Younghee Choi Martin, among others. After graduating from RISD, Carol moved to New York City where she has lived and worked for the past 30 years. She teaches art history, painting, and drawing at several colleges New York City and in the Lehigh Valley. Carol also works with Studio in a School, and ArtsConnection in New York.