Carla Hendra

About

Colour and pattern always lift me

As an artist and designer, I illuminate life’s small beauties, often natural, blended with my own memories. My work seeks to evoke joy – especially during times of personal, social or political struggle (which occurs in every moment, for someone, somewhere). As the world becomes harder, striking visual ideas can bring positivity and hope forward – the domain of ‘the soft’.

Long ago, Raoul Dufy’s painting and textile design work inspired me to study both. With Sonia Delauney and Alfred Latour, innovative painters/designers of 20th Century Paris, Dufy’s brilliant colours and patterns deeply influence my design work.

In a recent quirk of fate, an island of intense beauty – its changeable light and breezes, iridescent waters, brilliant floral colours, dusty olive trees and a very unusual pale yellow, local stone — all conspired to silently transform how I see. Beginning to paint more intuitively there, some new work emerged, unpolished in style and composition with variable, vivid palettes (like Dufy).

My media is water colour and acrylic dye for fine art sketch painting, and gouache for textile design, on water colour paper with digital enhancement. The work reflects many cultures where decoration and craft are celebrated, recalled from a bank of personal memories. Luminous colours and distinctive patterns are the design language, with a deliberately unfinished feel. From simple, even slight motifs, print designs evolve for fabrics, papers, furnishings, ceramics, or other surfaces.

Recollections blend with natural references – often flowers, the sea and sky, stone and iron, and the many geometries of life. By extracting any single element, enlarging or compressing its size, repeating it, juxtaposing surprising objects, or expanding a particular gesture, each design assumes its own identity and attitude. Imagery is extended or shaped with technology but retains natural, hand-mixed colour, and the brushstrokes of painting.

Like life, the work feels imperfect, unrefined but vibrant, bringing simple joy to surroundings anywhere.