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Curtis Hendricks
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When Time Defines

4/22/2019

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I try a lot of things in my work. I’m always experimenting (some might call it playing…). Sometimes a capture suggests a particular effect that previously resulted in a successful work, and I’ll try to follow that course. But every single work is different. Every one. The same template rarely works twice. In fact one bit of feedback I received at an exhibit was that all my works on display were clearly mine but none of them reflected exactly the same style. I go back and forth in thinking that was a compliment.

So I decide on a capture I want to work with, I start throwing things at it; when it starts moving a direction that appeals to me for any number of reasons I’ll follow that course until it no longer appeals, in which case I’ll start over, or I feel it’s finished. I don’t throw out much. I rarely give up. And when I feel I’ve done with it I’ll throw it out there where people can see it and wait to see how it plays. 99% of the time when I display a new work I believe something about it has value. There have certainly been works I didn’t expect people to like that people do, and works I really, really like that no one else seems to. And, of course, some complete bombs. But I throw everything out there to see what happens.

This work here – I really don’t like it.

I wrote in my last blog that my eye is attracted to strong lines. Edging creates strong lines – edging means the subjects of a work stand out. Edging is usually – usually – after basic exposure and cropping, where I start. This is the opposite of edging; call it ‘diffusion’. Diffusion essentially reflects the works of the late 19th Century impressionists. One of my most popular works, currently hanging on exhibit, uses diffusion. And I agree, it works quite well there.

This work here – not so much.

At least not to my eyes. I went about the diffusing process a little differently here. Usually I use a radial approach. This one uses long, diagonal strokes, and I’ve never done that before so, yeah, it hits me a little different. Normally a work takes a little time to ferment in my mind before I fully know how I feel about it – at least a few months. Sometimes it takes years. Even if I know right off the bat I really like something or I really don’t. Even when I’m positive how I feel about a work, a few months will go by and I’ll look at it in a different light and see something I didn’t before and my attitude about it will shift.

This time, I’m pretty positive, this one is a bomb. But I’ve been wrong before. So you tell me. Really – all of you. Can you hear the fuse tick, tick, ticking … ?

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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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