Catherine Jenna Hendry is a contemporary Australian artist known for hyper-realistic
This contemporary artist, who was born in South Africa and raised in Brisbane, Australia, is known for her hyper-realistic, large-scale artworks of luxury objects. For this, she uses her self-developed scribbling technique, since she has had no formal training in art and is completely self-taught. In fact, she studied architecture at Queensland University of Technology and finance at the University of Queensland in Australia but dropped out in favor of art. She subsequently moved to New York, USA.
In 2013, her incredible drawings, posted on the social media platform Instagram, garnered attention from fans around the world. Now, the 32-year-old Hendry hosts her own solo exhibitions and sells her pieces for upwards of two hundred thousand dollars. Her hyper-realistic artwork done with pen and pencil crayons—and no formal art training— is a testament to her natural skill as an artist. Her large-scale pieces of luxury objects, abstract colors, and flowers are nothing short of incredible.
“In the past, artists had to wait for a gallery to do your show and people couldn’t just see your work. They had to come to the exhibition when the gallery allowed it to happen. Now you can show people whatever you want at any time you wish,” she said.
Recently, for her seventh solo exhibition “Epilogue,” Hendry and her team renovated a derelict east London church. They drilled holes in the ceiling to install four industrial confetti machines filled with 10 tons of custom-made white confetti in the shape of flower petals, which will slowly fall over guests over the course of each day, gradually gathering on the ground.
These kinds of ways of engaging with the public, and the experiential potential of art, are now at the heart of what Hendry does. “We can sell the art without the exhibition, but that’s just being an Instagrammer. I can just sell art, but that is no interest to me,” she said. “It’s about, for me, building a bigger narrative, something more conceptual.”
Sources:
- https://youtu.be/KixMpzhMS-o?si=JoXWggu8B_ItVfa0
- https://awesomebyte.com/cj-hendry-original-art/
- https://myartisrealmagazine.com/2020/08/hyperrealistic-drawings-cj-hendry/
- https://www.cnn.com/style/article/cj-hendry-intl/index.html
- https://flair-magazine.com/interview-with-artist-cj-hendry/
- http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/
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