James Hendricks’ passion for art didn’t overshadow his love of science. It merely enhanced, colored, shaped and deepened that love. Over the years, his paintings have evolved from realistic moonscapes to riotously energetic explosions of color and texture.
Hendricks was a pre-med student at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville when he signed up for his first art class, simply to fulfill a fine arts course requirement. His earliest assignments were realistic landscape paintings, followed by abstract ones, and painting on collages made with bits of black, brown and white paper.
“I had never done a painting in my life,” recalls Hendricks, who now lives in Northampton, Mass. “Then the teacher took these up and put them on the board and said, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.’ It was fantastic.”
He left Arkansas in 1963 to pursue his art career but maintains ties with his home state. Greg Thompson, owner of Greg Thompson Fine Art in North Little Rock, who has represented Hendricks for 17 years, had just finished college when he met Hendricks in 1993 during Hendricks’ one-man exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center.