DamnPhotoArtist-Commune

A Muffled Sparkle

2/13/2020

Artists are symbionts.

I started to write that art is like puppies continuously dancing around your feet seeking attention and play and love and FOOD and trips outside and then another trip outside, and that’s great when the artist is in the mood for it, but when the artist isn’t it’s just annoying. All the more so in that they have to be taken care of whether annoying or not. Puppies are a responsibility; they have to be cared for and they won’t necessarily function according to a convenient schedule.

But art is not like a puppy. Somebody else might be around to occasionally do puppy duties. Nobody else can take care of an artist’s art. It nips at the consciousness demanding attention. There is never enough time to give to it. It is jealous of distractions. Given all it asks for the artist becomes self-absorbed, anti-social and cold; allow it to languish and the artist simply becomes hollow.

Artists are symbionts. We are a symbiosis of both human and non-human components. It’s why we’re nuts.

* * *

Today’s work came together quite happily. It required just the right amount of creativity – not too easy, and it did what it was supposed to do. Like a good puppy. I’m working with another piece right now that JUST-WON’T-DO-WHAT-I-WANT. I may be committing the cardinal sin of trying to force it to be something it can never be - trying to make the symbiont do something it doesn’t want to. Likely (hopefully) post it in a couple weeks …

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Curtis Hendricks

All my life I have had to learn to do things differently. To see the world differently.

Art attracted me from the beginning. Almost every home in the tiny farming village where I grew up had DaVinci’s ‘Last Supper’ on the wall. I would come across modern abstract art in magazines and be absolutely fascinated by the colors and techniques.

But there were no artists in my village. No one understood what modern art was. Or why it was. But there was an appreciation for photography.

I began shooting with a 1960 model Agfa rangefinder fixed-lens 35mm camera and learned to use darkroom techniques to finish my work. Graduating to a single lens reflex camera I worked primarily with Kodachrome. Digital photography opened a new world. The computer became the artboard I never had; the darkroom I could never afford. I discovered there would never be a camera or a lens that could capture what I saw in my head – that, I had to learn to create on my own.

I use the photograph the same way a painter uses a charcoal sketch – as a starting place. I squeeze out the unseen hiding between the pixels; the angels, the demons of my own imagination.

Light. Color. Darkness. Perspective. Introversion. Mystery. Love.

DamnPhotoArtist

A Muffled Sparkle

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Curtis Hendricks

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