Artist James Henderson will offer artists talk

James Henderson, a New Orleans-based artist, will present an artist’s talk for students and the interested public at Northwestern State University’s Hanchey Gallery at 2 p.m. Thursday, April 26.  He will speak again at 10 a.m. Friday, April 27 and will be guest of honor at a reception from 5-7 p.m. Friday. Henderson’s show is titled “Things I Thought Were Already Decided” and will be on exhibit at Hanchey through May 14.
 
“What zeal moves an artist to systematically give of themselves while pursuing each piece of work they undertake?  What powerful reason links the private reality and the work?  I don’t think it is enough to say that the transmission of information is the focus of creative behavior, since, as I understand it, the final goal is aimed at both others and the artist themselves,” Henderson writes in his artist’s statement.
 
“I sometimes think that things of the present do not become realities to me until they are past and find their existence in memory.  Here they are activated, become alive, and flourish in my brain.  They romp and play more realistically in my mind than any eight year old child gathering dandelions in a sunlit field.  But I cannot dismiss memory as easily as a child scatters the fluffs off the dandelion with one gentle puff of breath,” he explained.  “In this collection of paintings I look behind and ahead to bring to the surface reluctant memories both past and future.  In the eternal quest to move forward are we forgetting things we already decided?”
 
Henderson’s work has been shown in galleries in the San Francisco Bay area and New Orleans and is included in private collections in San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, New Orleans and New York City.
 
Gallery hours are 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 8 a.m.-noon on Friday.  For more information e-mail Gallery Director Leslie Gruesbeck at gruesbeckl@nsula.edu.