Navigating A Sea Change
By Richard Ferrara
Special to the Naples Daily News
Sometimes there comes a time in the life of an artist when the old way of doing things no longer suffices. It might come as a shift in perception that redefines the artist's entire mode of expression, or something novel erupts into his or her consciousness that demands to be recognized and evinced, no matter how radical or eccentric it might be. Picasso's realism broke apart into cubism. Jackson Pollock stopped painting all together and started dribbling profusely all over the canvas.
For local painter Debbie Henderson, a similar sea change in style took her from the concrete depiction of flowers into the unchartered world of the abstract.
"It's so eerie," Henderson said. "For the florals, I always gridded them out and made sure everything went in its place. Now I get a canvas and I go, 'OK, what am I gonna do?' And I don't know until I start working with it, but I know it's the way I should be going because it just comes from something internal that the universe has given me, and I just love it.”
Henderson's new approach to her art has made her this year's selection as Emerging Artist at the Naples National Art Festival to be held in Cambier Park on Saturday and Sunday.
Before delving into the free-form style of abstract expression and mixed media, Henderson had spent years building a repertoire of impressively rendered florals. However, all that changed when someone commissioned her to do an abstract. The result was a painting of geometric shapes and line configurations. She called it "Going In or Out?”
To see both periods of Henderson's style juxtaposed side by side is a bit perplexing. It begs the question: what happened? Henderson offers no satisfactory explanation. She laughs and throws up her hands. "I can't explain it!”
So it goes with so much of art. Its motivations are real and dynamic, but its origins somehow remain mysterious.
What Henderson does know is that part of it seems to come from her love of texture. Although she was able to create texture in her realistic images, she was no longer satisfied with what she could achieve through the medium. She wanted something much more tactile, something that could be felt and explored by the fingers.
For that reason, many of her abstracts incorporate a variety of materials that invite the viewer to reach out and touch them. Materials like pumice, copper, sea glass, polished stone, quartz and myriad others can all be found embedded in Henderson's canvases.
Abstract art opens the door to infinite interpretation. Because her paintings are so nebulous in form, getting at their meaning can be an effort of endless supposition.
One painting from her early abstract period has a large rounded piece of pumice at its center that seems to be exploding out into white, surrounded by a blended background of reds and blacks. Down at the bottom are two conspicuous black pebbles standing apart.
The painting's title, "Coming Out of the Pain," sheds light on Henderson's intent for the piece. It was inspired at a time when her sister was undergoing a double mastectomy and was intended to symbolize her convalescence from the surgery.
"It was the only painting that I ever dreamed beforehand," Henderson said.
Generally, though, rather than reveal her own intentions behind her work, Henderson prefers that the viewer interpret the art according to his or her individual perception.
Truth be told, there are many of Henderson's fans who'd rather not dabble too long in interpretation. They just kind of miss all the pretty flowers she used to paint. Many don't understand why she's gravitated to odd geometric shapes and meddling with strips of fabric and twists of wire.
"I've had to build up my client base again because most people who bought my florals, I think, were more traditional people with traditional tastes. They'll look at my florals and think that took a lot more talent to make. Well, they did take a lot more time, but my abstracts require just as much effort in thought.”
Henderson hopes this year's art festival will help her spread the word. She'll be at booth 1-Black in Cambier Park.
"She's our Emerging Artist because she's someone who's made a tremendous change," said Festival Director Tom Taylor. "Now she's really into the abstract. I think she probably has more feeling in this. She gets what an artist needs to get out of it.”
Even within the three years since her style underwent its remarkable change, Henderson's art continues to evolve in unexpected and idiosyncratic ways. She feels she can't predict where it might go next. One thing's for sure, she won't be painting any more flowers.
"I don't want to ever go back to what I used to do. It's like a journey and I don't know where the destination is."