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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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Summerfling

7/23/2020

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Picture
This piece is a blog bomb.

I was sitting in my Beer Garden (everybody has a beer garden, right?) over the weekend, fire going in the fire box and the fountain in the garden pool gurgling with clean water changed that very day. I looked over and saw these Black-Eyed Susan’s (no, I’m not sure that’s what they are either) and thought, “Well, that’s a nice shot”, so I reached for my camera, leaned over, and captured it. five minutes later it was on Facebook. I’d no intention of exhibiting it on this blog.

Here’s how much work and artistic effort went into this piece:

Doodley Squat.

As I look at it, the white balance is off, the sharpness could be better, and the vibrancy and color curves need work. It could also use some lighting tweaks. And that’s just from a photographer’s point of view – I haven’t begun to consider how the artist might attack it.

Now, in the past six months or so I’ve posted works I’ve spent hours on and that I’m quite proud of, like this one, and this one, or this one, and all of them were posted to Facebook via a link to this blog.

This little snapshot into which no work at all went has more ‘likes’ on Facebook than all of them.

What have we just illustrated here? Is it a commentary on the futility of the creative process and the irrelevance of the artist? Does it reveal humanity’s preference for simple vs. complex? Obvious vs. abstract? Pretty vs. thoughtful?

Does it bother me that people seem to so enjoy this remarkably simple piece? Not really, I’m glad people enjoy it. Heck, it’s because of this there are so many florals in my portfolio. But, I tell you, if this were all I ever did I would go out of my freaking mind.
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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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