Hello and welcome to the 37th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed Toronto based artist Kara Hendershot. We have a lot of her work hanging on our walls and my parents bought a piece from her before I was born, so this is a cool experience for me to get to ask her questions after admiring her painting for basically my whole life. I think Kara has a distinctive viewpoint regarding art and I really related to her ideas about empathy and art. I think you will enjoy her answers! Thank you for reading, and don't forget to check out Kara's Instagram at @karahendershot.
Jackson: What inspired you to become an artist? Did your Dad being an artist influence you?
Kara: My father's photographs taught me how to see. As a kid I would look at his black-and-white photographs, candid scenes from the 1970's of anonymous city dwellers on the streets of Toronto, Chicago, and Detroit. He intuitively captured a moment that, when viewing it in a photograph, caused me to wonder and to care about the life of a figure frozen in a frame of a silver gelatin print; just a stranger that my father passed on the street years before I was born. To be curious about the life of a person you've never met, to have empathy for them, that is what art is about. It connects us to one another. That is what my dad helped me see. At a certain point early on in my life, art became something I needed to do for solace and connection. I realized that if I wanted to keep doing this, then I would have to find a way to pursue it indefinitely, or else it might fall to the wayside. My father encouraged me to enroll in advanced placement studio courses in high school, which lead to me focus as a Studio Art major. After graduating from university, I took some time away from art. Then I came back to it and made a conscious decision to pursue art as a career.
Jackson: Do you feel your art has changed in any way since you moved back to Canada? Or since you became a parent?
Kara: Life experiences change your perspective. I feel that my art grows with me. Honestly though, I have not spent a great deal of time in the studio since moving back to Canada and having my son. But there are two components of making art. There is the execution of making the art - the manipulation of materials into a tangible piece. And then there is everything that comes before that and everything that is behind it - life experiences and life observations that influence the work, perspective, inspiration, memories, building a vision and amending it over and over, ideas just burning to become... Everything that has built in your head before it is drawn on paper. Right now, I am breathing in. I am reacquainting myself with the place where I was born. I am spending time with my son, as children are only so small for so long and I do not want to miss these incredible moments. I am building new work, but it's not here yet. I am working on everything that happens before the physical art piece happens. The art in my head will have to wait a little while to be born until I get back into the studio. I find that every time I take significant time away from the studio, to travel or study or just to live my life above the surface for a while, I come back with a drive and a hunger that is much stronger, and a readiness to plunge back down into my creative tunnel.
Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be and why?
Kara: I saw the film Seraphine a couple of years ago. It is about the early 1900s artist Seraphine Louis, a middle-aged housekeeper who paints late at night by candlelight. With no friends, no family, and no one to believe in her, she paints because she believes it is what she is meant to do, despite others mocking her and telling her that it is a waste of her time. A German art critic, who stays as a guest in the house that she cleans takes notice of her paintings and arranges exhibitions of her work. At some point in the film, on a high after some monetary success from her art, Seraphine buys a wedding gown and runs through the village, announcing her make-believe wedding. The neighbors believe her to have gone mad. She is locked away in an asylum and loses her will to ever paint again.
I would choose to meet Seraphine, to tell her that we need her art, as much as I wish to tell this to anyone who has lost their will through no fault of their own, to do what they feel they were meant to do.
