drmstream[writing]

Upper West Side by Julia Hens­ley. Acrylic on Bris­tol Board; 12″ x 8″; 2003

The clues are every­where, but it isn’t until you see the title that the entire mean­ing becomes clear.

I stum­bled across these paint­ings because I fol­low the artist on Twit­ter. Her han­dle is @julia_hensley. I don’t fol­low her because she’s an artist; a writer that I fol­low fol­lows her and I added her as I trolled look­ing for inter­est­ing people.

The other day Hens­ley posted a link that took me to the paint­ing above.

We see a lot of things every day in this vast flow­ing dig­i­tal stream. When I looked at the paint­ing, I had two imme­di­ate sen­sa­tions: I know this place and What is this painter doing?

Think of the impulses in Freudian terms: my Id and my Ego chim­ing in at the same time.

The sec­ond impulse was intel­lec­tual, an impulse to place the style and aes­thetic, deter­mine whether the form was exe­cuted with spirit and abil­ity, whether the com­po­si­tion and vision was imme­di­ate and authen­tic. These are hard things to judge when you look at a dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a phys­i­cal piece of art.

The sec­ond impulse was pure emo­tion. I know that I’ve seen that scene before.

Look at the paint­ing. It’s abstract,a min­i­mal in its approach. If it is some­place, it could be anyplace.

Then I noticed the title: “Upper West Side.”

Yes! That cap­tures it, look­ing down 96th Street from Ams­ter­dam out to the Hud­son River, the inex­press­ible beauty of the jux­ta­po­si­tion, the per­ma­nence, the evanescence,the great pull of the here and the far away.

I clicked through the other paint­ings in the series with the same bursts of recog­ni­tion. My intel­lec­tual assess­ment was sub­sumed by a vis­ceral con­nec­tion with these sur­pris­ingly rep­re­sen­ta­tional abstract works.

Some­where on her web site, I found a short expla­na­tion of the work by Hens­ley. Here’s an excerpt:

I paint how I see.

The dif­fer­ence between an abstract and rep­re­sen­ta­tional paint­ing is the num­ber of clues.

This approach extends beyond paint­ing. When you cre­ate, you are giv­ing the world clues to what you see. Each word, each note, each stroke is another piece of infor­ma­tion, that in com­bi­na­tion with oth­ers in the work, elicit recog­ni­tion and aware­ness in the audience.

The power of an impres­sion is when the viewer owns the moment of dis­cov­ery, can say that they felt it, con­nected with it, in an hon­est and authen­tic way.

As an artist, mak­ing that con­nec­tion is the reward.

Hens­ley titles are the final clue. They root the image and give the viewer an index of ref­er­ence points that he can use to con­nect the image to a place that influ­ences palette, energy and composition.

It’s a gen­er­ous and giv­ing act by the artist.

Hous­ton St. by Julia Hens­ley. Acrylic on Bris­tol Board; 12″ x 8″; 2003

You can see Hensley’s work here on her web­site. Hope you enjoy it.