Bendel Hydes


		CENTURIES OF LIGHT IN ONE DAY Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 50.8 cm 2006 My work is concerned primarily with the sensory world of sight, sound and touch and in the visual metaphors thereby produced to cerebrally enhance physical and conceptual possibilities. Mostly through painting, I use the language of translucent and biomorphic abstraction to explore ways in which nature and culture interact, reflecting on both the rational and ritualistic concerns of perceiving these opposites. Through a "geography of spatial color" and a vocabulary of semi-figurative shapes and symbols, I strive to address such issues as topographical changes, isolation, beauty, vulnerability and the character of place to traverse the boundary between physical abstraction and emotional reality, thus forming the narrative that binds the work together. The duration of a passing sound vibration or the feeling of the wind by the ocean may elucidate an experience to be reconciled or the colour and movement of a particular shape may produce a new imaginary paradigm. The mind and memory of my work is in the process. Whether it is applying continuous washes and drips of colour over another, sculpting and mixing paint with another substance, or in the gesture, my aim is to question the aesthetics of the materials I use. In a recent environmental work, Starpath, the abundance of naturally occurring turtle-grass and sea-debris allowed me to create giant stars along a stretch of deserted beach, thereby merging land, sea and sky in one sweeping universal gesture. Specifically, I am interested in meaning that depends on context and in visual signifiers that resonate the nature of experience through that context. Bendel Hydes, 2005. "In every painting the bi-polarity of unbounded optimism, joy and elation and oppressive vulnerability stares back at you. Look at any painting; look at the ‘First Light’ series. At primary pass there is a monumental beauty and tranquility, a drift and sea -away of celestial tone and magnitude that ascends; clings to the senses like morning mist. Now pass again and see, the shadow/duppy lurking, sometimes in familiar tonal guise of steel, gun-metal or Payne’s grey or understated in soft rust or umbers; celebratory tones which allows it to wash over, lurk under, attach or bleed into, chamelion-like, indistinguishable from the evil it portends.” Henry Muttoo Bendel Hydes: Selected Works; 1989-2001 National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. THE WORLD CHANGES COLOUR Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm 2006 Bendel Hydes was born in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. He did his Foundation year in Art at Liverpool College of Art and went on to his degree course at Canterbury College of Art in England. In his last year at Canterbury he left England and transferred to Clark University in the United States to pursue ‘a more intellectual approach’ to art and ideas, and pursued studies in International Relations and philosophy, receiving his BA in 1976. Since 1982 he has lived and worked in New York City. Mr. Hydes has exhibited at the Commonwealth Institute, London (1986), the 23rd International Biennale de Sao Paulo, Brazil (1996), the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands (2003) and participated in numerous exhibitions internationally, including the 30th International Festival of Painting, at the Museum of Cagnes-sur-Mur, France, “Caribbean Visions: Contemporary Painting and Sculpture,” 1994-96, the most acclaimed survey of Caribbean art ever assembled which traveled to eight United States museums from the Center for African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. to the Latin American Art Museum, Long Beach, California. Works by Bendel Hydes are in the collections of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands, Cayman Island National Archive, UBS (Cayman Islands), HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as well as numerous private collections internationally. Bendel Hydes is featured in ‘Caribbean Art,’ a history of Caribbean painting, published by Thames & Hudson, London and in ‘He Hath Founded it Upon the Seas: A History of the Cayman Islands and its People,’ 2003. He is a Co-Founder of the Cayman Islands National Gallery and the Cayman National Cultural Foundation.