DamnPhotoArtist-Commune

The Discarded Pumpkins Of November

11/12/2019

OK, sabbatical over, more or less. I may not be creating and posting as frantically as this past summer; after all, we don’t want this to become a … dare I say the word … a JOB!

August’s exertions took me in new directions stylistically, and, after the afore mentioned break, I still find myself visualizing in those terms. There are folks who prefer the more unadulterated noir side of my portfolio; I’ll certainly get back to that at some point, but the abstract techniques I’m using seem to be opening up entirely new vistas. These things run in spurts.

* * *

This past Sunday afternoon, while attending a gallery reception, smart phone alerts went off simultaneously around the room while one of the featured artists was speaking. It was sunny and nearly 70 degrees outside and I was wearing shorts and a pair of Keen Uneek sandals. The alerts turned out to concern a winter storm warning set to begin 12 hours later. Eighteen hours later I was putting on a winter coat and boots to take the dogs out in freezing rain and sleet. Twenty four hours later there was two inches of snow on the ground and the temperature was 40 degrees colder.

Sure, that’s a quick change, but relative to what? Social media is constantly awash with trite like, “If you don’t like the weather in [name any city or state] just wait an hour”. An hour, a day, a month – if one is not open to change any timeframe seems fast. A year, a decade, a century – hasn’t that crap changed yet? Why would these damn fools want to go back and do that crap again?

I completely get ‘time’s up’.

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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

The Discarded Pumpkins Of November

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Curtis Hendricks

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