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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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Monotony

7/27/2020

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Beginning today a series of seven works, two of which I might combine, around the theme of “monochrome”.

I woke up a couple weeks ago and realized I had two galleries about to open exhibits themed as “monochrome” at almost exactly the same time, and unless I wanted to submit only noir works I had to get busy. I kinda like it when something like that happens because it forces a creative burst – sure enough, in short order I had produced these seven new works.

“Monochrome”, of course, simply refers to work that uses a single-color pallet or shades of that one color. Black and white or ‘noir’ as I affectionally call it is the most obvious. Grey might be the most realistic shade for reproducing monochromatic images or at least the most recognizable, but any color works as long as it’s used with effect.

Two approaches: one is to bend all colors towards a single shade. The other is to start with an image in which all colors have been removed, then add back the desired shade. This work utilizes the former. Also noteworthy is the use of extrusions – those bands of light across the image. It’s those bands that can give blending options their diversity. In this case, however, it’s the variety of directions from which those bands, well, extrude. I used two different canvases to vary the point at which those extrusions began, then blended them back in. The technique of blending separately filtered canvases together defines my recent work.

* * *

​I want to explain the title of this work, lest an impression is imparted that it reflects upon the “monochrome” theme. Not at all. Many of my best, most dramatic works are noirs. The title is appropriate to the scene; a guy staring forlornly into food shelves, unable to identify anything to which his desires moved, I’d actually circled around this guy while discreetly capturing the image, and he continued to just stand there, staring into a baloney of sameness that, somehow, seems consistent with our Corona-days.
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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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