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Bringing life to fading places
OCTOBER 2009
By Doug Smith
Photographs by Kelly Holinshead
Michelle Basic Hendry’s evocative paintings of old, abandoned or soon-to be demolished buildings encourage the viewer to look beyond the obvious to get a glimpse of the people who once inhabited the places she records through her art.
Hendry’s artwork is a study in contrasts. While her work centres on the final stages – the imminent death if you will – of a building, she brings the buried beauty of peeling paint and crumbling plaster to the surface. A coat left on the back of a chair or shoes sitting outside a bedroom door make it seem as though someone just left the frame of the picture and suggests that if you try, you might catch a glimpse of a retreating back.
“In a way, painting is an ancient form of storytelling. In a lot of cases it’s a lot about symbolism regardless of the style of your painting style,” Hendry philosophizes. “I think that people expect there to be symbolism in abstract or expressionist or less realistic art. In realistic art it may be less obvious so you may overlook the symbolism. I think it depends on what art means to an individual. Some people look for the symbolism in an art piece and others for the sheer emotion.” ...
More on this feature can be seen in the October 2009 issue of Muskoka Magazine.
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