Brenda Hendrix was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1956, and received a B.S. in art education from the University of Alabama in 1978. She moved to Denver, Colorado in 1981, drawn to the area by the power and beauty of the mountains, and has painted landscapes of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West full time since 1992. Brenda is the oil painting instructor at the Curtis Arts and Humanities Center in Greenwood Village, Colorado, and has taught individual and group workshops in the United States and Mexico.
As an artist, as a teacher of art, and as a lifelong student of art, Brenda is engaged in an ongoing exploration of artistic ideas, materials, techniques, and subject matter through both historic and contemporary sources. Notable written works she has studied include those by John F. Carlson (on landscapes), Edgar Payne (on composition), and Charles Le Clair (on color theory). She cites Winslow Homer (for artistic independence), Mark Rothko (for explorations of color), the impasto of Nicholai Fechin, the draftsmanship of Edgar Degas, and Sergei Bongart's passion for teaching, as some of her influences from the past. And among the living, she has studied with artists such as Kim English, Michael Lynch, and Clyde Aspevig.
Brenda is a colorist who paints representational landscapes as an avenue for exploring how color interacts with subjects to create a sense of both mood and moment. She relates every color in a painting to others, frequently incorporating secondary and tertiary complementary color schemes to create vibrancy out of a low-key palette, and contrasting warm undertones in a cool painting (or vice versa) to harmonize the piece.
During frequent excursions along the byways, rivers, and trails of Colorado and the rest of the Rocky Mountain West, Brenda captures both grand and intimate scenes that portray the simple beauty of nature. Back in her studio, she works to express those quintessential moments as impressionist paintings. With her loose, fresh, and certain brushwork, and her complex and subtle use of color, Brenda portrays the grandeur of the western landscape through nuance rather than detail, portraying the world as it still is in some places - unaffected by man or his artifacts.