Music in Painting

 

             Mike Henderson



I attended a lecture at Sacramento State April 12th for the artist Mike Henderson. Henderson is a musician, painter, and filmmaker. Art was something that he new he wanted to do. He quit school at sixteen and went back to school to get his high school diploma when he turned twenty one. The artist grew up in Missouri then he traveled to California later on to continue his art studies. Mike Henderson said that he always had a sketchpad with him. Earlier in his life Henderson worked at a shoe shine stand and he painted when he didn't have any customers.


            Earlier Paintings


Mike Henderson first saw abstract paintings at the Van Gogh show in which he saw examples of paintings such as work by George O'Keeffe.  When he first began painting he only had two colors blue and white oil paints. He learned to paint at the Art Institute of San Francisco. He began to paint scenes of the surrounding areas of San Francisco. Through his earlier paintings, he explored colors and how they interacted.


Painting of Columbus and Union St

      Painting doubt of religion

The artist then began to paint things that he liked people doing. Henderson was a musician and many of his paintings reflected his musical background. He painted scenes with music and bands. The artist began to doubt religion. He didn't like the idea of "praying to a white Jesus." He didn't like the way life was set up in California in which African Americans dealt with the issue of turning the other cheek. He felt that suffering wasn't something that he was meant to do.


              Painting shapes
The next progression in his work led him down the path in which he painted shapes. He believed that you can learn to paint anything with four basic shapes. These shapes can be found in nature. He also saw these shapes in space. During this period in time was around the time we landed on the moon. He attempted, during this process to use different tones of grey to get more color into the painting. Through each painting, the artist also tried to work on something technical such as space, working on the figure from left to right, and challenging what was comfortable.

       The Chair as a metaphor



        Trash can as metaphor





The artist also went through a style where he began to create art from found objects. Cutting holes in the canvas, burning it in the oven, and adding water to the canvas. He used different materials to create a sort of collage with his art materials. After awhile he started to miss the brush in his hand. He started to use the chair as a metaphor for heavy conversation. He also used the trash can in his paintings as a metaphor. The trash cans symbolized, "to get to something, you have to go through something." He painted the human situation and personal life experiences through the painting of common day objects he saw around him. Such as with the trash cans, those are things he saw every day were the trash cans and the homeless. He felt you can tell much about a person by what they throw away in the trash cans and the condition in which the trash cans were left.


              Color as sound

Mike Henderson always considered himself exploring through his art. He never wanted to paint the same thing. Everything had to be spontaneous. He always considered doing something on a piece of paper before he entered a canvas. The artist also explored different sizes of canvas because he felt the size of the canvas effected how the artist applies paint to the canvas. Color guided much of his work and later on in his career, he began exploring painting color as sound. The image above is a painting he did when he moved to Oakland. The many uses of color reflect the sounds of the crowd in Oakland. This was his process of getting back into the flow of painting color. Through his work Henderson always tried to "figure out who I am?" He also stated, "working through the arts is a good way to find out who you are." That last quote really stuck with me at the end of the lecture because while we create our own art we are trying to figure out what our art is saying about us or about the world. Our art stands as a symbol to tell the viewer who we are and what statement we want to make through that art. Art can be influential if that's the intention and we hold the power to say something with the art we make.