Natasha Henderson's Artist Statement:

Painting is a method of recognizing and representing history and time. As a process, painting simultaneously is steeped in history yet refers to the creation of history. Painting is older than recorded civilization. I am devoted to painting and all its potentials.

My current work is situated within a contemporary context, yet alludes to historical methods of painting. I work with ideas about storytelling, perspective, landscape, and symbolism. I create evocative work that speaks about things that could only be said in paint. In doing this, I am thinking about language.

Painting is a visual language. Like spoken, read, and written languages, there are many painting dialects. The same word, image, or brushstroke has a multitude of meanings dependent upon context, inflection, and proximity to others. The relations between these “nouns” in my painting help to form “verbs”: in between the lines are actions and different implications. Of course, “adjectives” come into play… especially when the “nouns” are affecting one another! The way in which a passage is painted is important to what is gleaned from the whole work.

My approach is to use painting as a narrative tool. It is storytelling that brings in a contemporary audience, inviting them to fashion their own story out of what appears on the canvas. Outside of my intent, and the viewer’s response, the paint tells a story too. Within the underpainting are drips, brushstrokes and seemingly purposeless, random marks that help to form the final picture. The paint itself creates both intent and content.

Poetry

A few years ago, I was captivated by a discussion about a poetic format.

I was jogging with a poet friend and we were discussing this format, the Ghazal. She was describing the formal rules of the poem, and how poets opt to follow, break, bend, and twist those rules. We talked about the deeper meaning of those rules, and how culture and time changes the poetic form. It (the poetic format in question) stays alive by adapting, yet keeping its formalities.

I was inspired to make a small series of Ghazal paintings.

To begin and function, I needed to decide how I would express the ideas of rhyming couplets, how to express rhythm. I worked out my system, and began. After and during working on these, I thought and wondered about other poetic forms, and how they would “translate” into painting. I eventually moved on to the Sonnet.

Using a similar approach, but not so free-formed, I painted lines. I painted the idea of iambic pentameter. I painted in “rhymes” (similar shapes.) Then I went to town. I came up with five different paintings using this form.

Again owing to my creative process, I was thinking ahead while I was focused on these works. What if I painted specific Sonnets? I grabbed my trusty old book of Shakespeare, and let myself be inspired by specific Shakespeare sonnets. I chose my works, and began each of these new paintings with an oilstick drawing, in response to the poem. I didn’t stick with the “format” idea so much as I had before, rather loosely interpreted in image what I was reading.

After having worked on them for what seemed to be long enough, I decided to let the Poetry Paintings rest for a bit. I painted other bodies of work. I did talk about these paintings with people, I did sell some, I did have opportunities to show them, scattered within group exhibitions. Then, this opportunity came to exhibit them all together for the first time. Once I realised I would be doing this, I immediately began working on another poetic format in painting: the Haiku. With the Haiku, I have opted to be a little pictorial, not so abstract in the painting. There is a hint of either landscape or nature in these poems/paintings. -Natasha Henderson