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Curtis Hendricks

DamnPhotoArtist

Photo Art* & Small Literature**
* Computer-based art that uses a photograph as a base
** Short Prose

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Floating Through The Almost Past

2/18/2019

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An artist who specializes in pen and ink drawings gave me the following insight into selling art not long after I began exhibiting: “I’ve learned it’s not how well I draw as much as it’s what I draw”. He goes to a couple dozen shows a year and does quite well selling drawings of sports figures and sports venues, as well as college venues, thus drawing from fans and alumni.

I seriously doubt ‘art-in-the-park’ is something you will ever see me doing – just not my thing. I prefer my work to be exhibited in galleries where there is an expectation of great art, as opposed to pickers scrounging through a flea market. Nor will my work ever be stacked ‘in the bin’ where quick fingers can flick through 50 in a minute. My work will be viewed hanging on gallery walls where it can be seriously viewed. Venue aside, the insight provided me, that subject is more important than technique or creativity, is an important context in terms of sales.

The skyline of my humble little river town is dominated by the Missouri State Capitol, a marble covered building modeled after the one in the District of Columbia. It offers several thousand different angles that catch the light in ten thousand different ways and is fodder for every artist and photographer in town. We all have works involving the Capitol – my own portfolio surpasses 60 works (not including all the efforts that never made the portfolio) plus another couple already this year.

An no one cares.

It’s like this: The Capitol has been covered so thoroughly that every new work just seems to blend into the masses no matter how creative it may be. Besides, many people don’t want to be reminded of politics in any way, shape, or form. This particular work is another capture of the statue of Ceres being hoisted off the dome for refurbishing. It is the last of the dozens of captures I made that day that I will bother working with. This one simply caught my eye and I couldn’t resist the creativity it offered. I don’t like it as well as ‘Flight of the Goddess’ which I posted a few weeks ago, but as it happens, I seem to have been the only person who liked that one. So I offer it to the ether, tossing it out to see if it sticks. Tossing it in the air to see if it the ‘what’ catches someone’s interest.
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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.

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