DamnPhotoArtist-Commune

Deep In The Foliage

9/4/2019

Days past I might have considered this a rut. My standard routine has been to wildly vary the techniques I use, even when working from the same series of photographs. The result is that my portfolio has hundreds of works, with only a few of them similar enough to exhibit together. In those days past, I believed repeating techniques to be a weakness. In these days now, I believe not having a series of works in consistent techniques to be a weakness.

I’d started bending in recent times, but limited it to three or four similar works, tops, and even then there were variations. I bent a lot in my recently completed tornado series (yeah, there’s a pun there I’m trying to avoid) because it seemed there was only one appropriate way to depict the carnage. Now, it’s raindrops. Again, there’s a vision I’m going for and there are specific techniques I’m using to get there. The result is a half dozen works that coexist on the same wall in synergy greater than the sum of its parts.

I don’t THINK I’m moving away from the single, one of a kind statement that constitutes most of my portfolio. I don’t THINK I’ll become predisposed to repeat the same identifiable techniques over and over in a mass marketing frenzy (babies in flowers). I THINK I’ve learned to carry a vision across a broader pallet.

But I’ve been wrong before.

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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

Deep In The Foliage

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Curtis Hendricks

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