DamnPhotoArtist-Commune

The Power Of Imagination

5/4/2020

One of the joys of experimenting in art is coming up with something not achieved before, at least not by the artist doing the experimenting. It’s different from seeing a work, seeing how it was done, then following the recipe – that routine does not occupy the same creative level. It doesn’t necessarily matter if that “something new” is good or bad or whatever. It’s the thrill of new birth.

Once an artist achieves something new, the creative act shifts towards refinement; towards its application to different visions. That process has its own joys and may even be ultimately more fulfilling. But it doesn’t have the surprise element that happens when “once” happens.

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Today, May the 4th, 2020, my state begins a phased ‘re-opening’ after Coronavirus Quarantine, recognizing, some have suggested, that there is now room for new arrivals in the ICU. At this writing I don’t know yet what exactly it means or how it will affect my family; leave us in full knowledge that this was only the first quarantine and that more will be coming. A combination of boredom and lack of imagination implores a reopening for an economy that has just proved itself unsustainable. But arriving at a new outcome requires more … experimenting.

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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 Power Of Imagination

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Curtis Hendricks

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