Review

"Hope," Acrylic, Ink and Spray Paint on Canvas.

Thomas Hendrix

9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Apex Art Space
(Crossroads Dentistry)
1819 Wyandotte Street
Kansas City, MO
816.841.0206

Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday (except holidays), 6-9 p.m. First Fridays.
Runs through: Mar. 31

Gallery site: http://www.apexartspace.com

Ask Thomas Hendrix to describe his art, and the self-taught painter will point you to his art.

Words are not my strength, Hendrix writes; instead, I've always used my eyes and hands. When I close my eyes and feel the paint move underneath my fingers on a blank surface, words don't mean anything.

There is a story, however, underneath the paint. Hendrix again.

Growing up in Apple Valley, California, I filled my time with riding my bike out in the desert. Taking in that open arena of hues, shapes, detail, lines, images has followed me into my work. I would get angry as a kid and unlike my brothers who would beat the crap out of each other, I would paint it or draw it. My favorite paintings are the ones who I turned that emotion around into something beautiful for people to view.

Hendrix's first show of paintings, now on display at Apex Art Space (inside Crossroads Dentistry), is full of such emotional moments, executed in a style both raw and intricate. In several of the paintings, there's a strong feeling of emergence from a tangled environment into one of openness and limitless possibility.

Hope, today's featured piece, is among those works.

Everything in the painting conveys purposeful and irresistible upward motion, from the positioning of the bird's head and wings to the strong lines that sweep from lower right to upper left.

There's a story behind the lines, too.

A few years ago I started tattooing which I also carry through in my artwork, Hendrix writes. A piece never feels finished without a thick black line somewhere.

The lines do more than add visual impact to Hendrix's paintings. They also make a point about the value of each color within the larger whole ... and a deeper variation of that point on an even bigger scale.

He explains: Just as the separation of each color from the other, or how one piece is so unique to the next, so are we as humans in this world.

Hendrix sells himself short. His art speaks for him, and does so powerfully and silently ... but this young artist is perfectly capable of expressing his vision with words as well as hands.

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