I am drawn to the quiet, solitary, and widely misunderstood side of human existence. I am drawn to these shadows because I want to understand them. Creating paintings is a chance for me to reflect, to live with ghosts for a while. In this stillness, I can revive the things that I am taught to forget. It is the strongest way I know how to communicate, to find a connectedness to a world outside my own.

My work is influenced by a personal experience of familial estrangement and a deep curiosity in the varied dimensions of human reality. I am interested in a hidden narrative; nothing is always as it seems and there is more to a human life than what we see. My process begins in a raw and intuitive manner, developing many layers and blending the human figure with abstraction, searching to uncover a story that begs to be told.

It is important to me to allow the viewer to have their own dialogue with my work. Fragments of my paintings are left abstract and unspoken to spark a continuous dynamic between reality and uncertainty, where the viewer can be receptive to possibility.

-Kara Hendershot

Artist Resume