DamnPhotoArtist-Commune

Showers From Heaven

8/29/2019

Back at it after an extended battle with .. allergies. Yeah, that’s it – allergies!

From an artistic standpoint today’s work is another exercise in doing just enough that it constitutes ‘photo art’ as opposed to photography, but not so much as lose the detailed photographic elements, in this case the rain drops. Take the raindrops away and the abstraction could have been more profound. But I like the raindrops. The next several works, BTW, will feature plants and raindrops.

From a subject standpoint, this is a vine native to this region, though I’ve no idea what (feel free to let me know…). When we moved into our home backyard was, and still is, bordered by an overgrown fence row with mostly woods behind. Part of that overgrowth was, and still is, thick honeysuckle, which annually would explode in the most exquisite aromas. When I built my beer garden, revealed in my August 21 post, I decided to frame one end of it in honeysuckle as well. It had been in the ground, thriving, for a few years when I was told, NO! Don’t do that! Honeysuckle is an invasive species! Use this instead.

So when I expanded the border I did. And for three years, I thought it was just this dead thing sticking out of the ground. Sure each year it seemed to come back and grow a bit more, but there was nothing to it; no blooms and only the rare leaf. Then suddenly, BOOM, I get all this. I get blooms like this all summer. Comes in thicker every year.

Several obvious morals to this tale. But, yeah … obvious.

0 Comments

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

Showers From Heaven

Leave a Reply.

Curtis Hendricks

Archives