James Hendricks has been creating abstract expressionist paintings for the past fifty years. Each painting requires great physical energy to convey the energetic movement, eros, temperament and inner tension which characterize his art. Abrupt gestures emerge from flatness just to dissolve back into the painterly magma. Most of the canvases are large in scale and initially set on the floor in order for Hendricks to move freely with paint in many directions. Nothing is ultimately finished and static; the paintings are single frames of the emergence process. The tension and dynamic of conflicting spirals and strokes in primary colors, either pitch black or red, evoke the inner tension of the creative spirit. The artist's use of polychromatic pigments is totally innovative, since unique formula of paint allows colors to transform in the spectrum of light and viewing angle.
In an essay on Hendricks, Donald Kuspit states, “James Hendricks’ paintings have been connected to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which argues that chance and probability are built into matter, and to quantum mechanics. Certainly Hendricks’ interest in science is evident in his early paintings of the moon, inspired by NASA photographs of the lunar terrain. But his new paintings seem unequivocally emotional rather than equivocally scientific in import. They are quintessentialized action paintings, conveying primal emotions through a primitive topography of gesture and surface.”
James Hendricks was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. After receiving a B.A. from the University of Arkansas, he studied with Lothar Krueger and Rubin Reif and received his M.F.A from the University of Iowa, where he studied painting with Robert Knipschield. Hendrick's artwork has been exhibited in numerous museums, academic institutions, cultural centers and art galleries all over the world. James Hendricks was a professor of art at the University of Massachusetts and a visiting artist, consultant and jury member for numerous art competitions. Selected public collections include Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum (Washington, D.C.), Arkansas Arts Center, Bank of Boston, Seoul Institute of Arts (Korea), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Finch College Museum, New York, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, M.I.T. List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, as well as numerous corporate collections.