BRESLER RESIDENCY: JAY HENDRICK

Jay Hendrick has been experimenting with ways to make a painting through a process he calls “stretch and restretch.”  He decides how large a painting is going to be and then using stretcher bars that are often too small for the overall canvas, stretches a portion of the canvas, makes a painting, and then moves the stretcher bars to another spot. The final painting is an amalgamation of many paintings. Jay Hendrick also thought about how to involve the local community of painters with his studio residency. He asked painters Pat Goslee, Mei Mei Chang, Kathryn McDonnel, Matt Pinney, Becca Kallem, Amy Hughes Braden to collaborate with him on paintings. Hendrick  gave each of these artists his paintings to work on. When the paintings came back to his studio, Hendrick worked on them again. Questions of authorship and intention are central to his investigation as well as curiosity.  “I paint to learn,” says Hendrick. “The painting resembles a living thing. To paint is to understand paint in the same way that to live is to understand how to live.” The flexible, inventive ways that Hendrick approaches painting may reflect a direct relationship to his small town Texas upbringing. How to resist and challenge conditioned responses are operational challenges behind his investigation of painting. The grid acts as a stabilizing system that can be poked, prodded, and dissolved. The canvas can be folded, stretched again, draped, or thrown on the floor.  There can be one artist or two or more making one painting. “Each time, I have to deal with what came before,” Hendrick says. This holds true for both painting and life.