Hi!

Hello,

So this is the blog for Joy Hernandez Art. This is the story behind the art. And this is the first post. Yay!

Sometimes, I have a hard time ...explaning... my art. People will ask me questions about why I painted it, what inspired me, what does it "mean" and I have no clue what to answer. Some of my work comes from my day job, a TV news photographer. I see stuff on a day-to-day basis that just kind of intrigues me, so I paint it. Sometimes, I'm painting odd, stylized versions of something from back home (Illinois). Sometimes, it's just an idea that popped into my head that I just need to get out of my head. And, man, do I get antsy until that can happen.

I guess my driving force behind my art is making something visible so that others can see what I see. My first career goal was to be an animator, to work for Disney (thanks, Lion King) and to draw what I "see" so that other people can watch it. Unfortunately, I have about a 3 second attention span. I found out, half way through college, that there was no way I could sit there for the next 40 or so years of my life, and draw the same drawings, with only minute changes, over and over, to make images move. So I changed directions, moved to Indiana, and got into television news. Now, I only have to hit a record button and stand there for thirty seconds in order to have 30 seconds of video. Much better than drawing 500 pictures! And now the viewer can see what I saw!

My 2-D art is like that, in fact, its all related. My news photography is an extention of my art; from shot composition to subject matter, I can't have one without the other. But with my 2-D art, the art on this website, I can show you whatever I want. I don't have to wait for the right circumstances to be there, in order to capture that sight. If I want to see a statue on Rapa Nui wear sunglasses, I don't need to wait for someone to put a giant pair on it, I can just paint it and you'll see it!

And then that three second attention span plays in: As you browse the images on my website, you notice that there is no discernable theme for the subject matter of my artwork. In fact, in most cases, there is no discernable theme in the style of my artwork. I will work in one style, in one type of medium for a while, then get bored, or run out of ideas, and do something else. I'm versatile! *bows* Eventually, I'll come back and work again on another style (I need to do some more pastels...) but until then, I'm a pinball machine bouncing around.

The only discernable connection is: Color! I'm not scared of bold colors and I'm not scared of bold black lines. I had a wonderful fellow art student teach me the value of working in dark black (not shying away from it at all) when I was in high school, and to that, a shout-out to Carl Baker. And of course, the only way to balance out the blackest-blacks are with the boldest color. I'm a fan of orange, as any good Kewaneean should be, and I personally see the world rich with color. Take some time, sometime, to stare at a cloud. Or a vast field. Notice all the bits of color there, more than Crayola could ever dream up. There's purple in that green, you know.

So here's the introduction to the world of Joy Hernandez Art. As I work on projects, I'll post pics of the process (hopefully...unless I'm on some kind of roll). As I finish projects, I'll post a pic here at the same time I put them in my online gallery, and explain what was going on behind it, where it came from. And as I participate in art events, and after I've participated, I'll blog all about it.

Thank you.