Choose Mountains – The artwork of Natalia Heiser

With one thin line after another, Natalia Heiser repeats an organic fractal pattern again and again until she scales a complex mountainous range. She continues line by line creating an inked path to jagged peaks and rocks rising above tree canopies – all with a stroke of a pen, or shall I say thousands of strokes. The Cascades have risen off the paper.

Natalia remembers the first time she saw mountains on a road trip from her home in Illinois to Colorado and knew they should be part of her daily life. Her company Cottonwood Canopy launched after finding inspiration from quilt patterns and contrasting geometric designs that she incorporated into her artwork, mountains and landscapes were given new life with simplified geometric shapes.

Natalia invited me to her studio to see her latest work – and fill me in on her new local exhibit. It was good to connect again (she was one of my featured artists for an earlier blog post on holiday entertaining) and see her at work.

Get to know artist Natalia Heiser of Cottonwood Canopy:

Describe yourself.

I am from a small town in Illinois but felt like I always had an adventurer’s spirit.  I moved to Colorado after college and eventually found my way to Washington with my family.  I’ve always been a creative person and enjoy finding correlations between life and nature.  I  love self reflection and learning about the mind.   I enjoy deep thoughts, the grandeur of nature, my family, good friends, food and art.  

When did you begin creating art professionally?

I started my art business in 2016.  At that point my kids were 2 & 5 and I was thinking about what I was going to do after they were both in school.  I found myself really inspired by some wood we had from a fence my husband took down in our backyard and started making art with it.  I realized that it was now or never for me to let myself become the artist that I was, so I dove in.

What is the best piece of advice you were given when you started? 

The best piece of advice I was given I actually read.  It is by . In short, he states that creatives have good taste but for beginners there is a gap between our taste and the work we produce.  We know the work is not good but our taste is; so the best thing to do is to make a ton of work.  Keep making that work till you slowly start to close the gap.  This was so encouraging to me and really helped me keep going.    I enjoy my work now, but I can still see where I’d like to improve it and this will simply take time and I’m okay with that because it is a process. 

What tool or object could you not live without?

Other than paper and ink my favorite tool is social media.  Social media, specifically Instagram, has opened up opportunities for me and allowed me to be bolder than I might be in person.  I love it and cannot see making my art career work without it.  Social media marketing has become a necessity for creatives.

Name a fear or professional challenge that keeps you up at night? 

Something that keeps me up at night is not meeting a deadline or worrying about if someone will like a commission they had me make.  I know art is subjective, but it still would be awesome if every piece was liked and sold! 

What is your no-fail go-to when you need inspiration? 

When I need inspiration, I do a couple things.  Last year I started building an inspiration library.  I have some books from some of my favorite artists: Ansel Adams, M.C. Escher and my newest favorite Ashley Longshore.  I’ll flip through those and then do a 15-minute art session.  I started doing these 15-minute art sessions where I give myself 15 minutes to do a small drawing and then make it available for $15.  They are fun and fast to make and often are great sketches for larger pieces.  Plus, it’s something that is affordable for people that want original art but can’t invest in a large piece yet.

What does the next year hold for you? 

To be honest I don’t know what 2020 holds for me but I’m hoping to mark more off my art bucket list.  When I started 2019, I made a bucket list for my art career.  On that list I had get my work in more public spaces like hotels or restaurants, get my work published in an art magazine, have a new body of work for a gallery show and some other things like make album art & donate a piece of art to a charity all were on that list. I ended 2019 getting my work into two hotels and one restaurant.  I’m entering 2020 with multiple quotes out there for future hotels and hope to mark some more things off that list.

There are elements of Natalia’s work that remind me of Melana Bontrager– maybe it’s the repeated fractal patterns or the shapes and symbols made popular during the Mid Century Modern era that draws a correlation. See for yourself here.

Finally, see Natalia’s work is on view at LJ’s Bistro in Lake Stevens, WA – a cute as hell bar and bistro with a fantastic Happy Hour and fresh menu that is a pleasant surprise. (They even have a vegan menu.) And you can of course purchase Natalia’s work from her webpage www.cottonwoodcanopy.com and connect with her on .

Are you moved or motivated by Fibonacci or fractal? Let me know in the comments below.
~Wendy