Cary Henrie must have been born
with an inherent connection to the American West, and it permeates his
artwork. Born in Utah, 1961, he later moved to New York to study art at
the prestigious Pratt Institute. After painting for ten years in the
city, Henrie set out on his westward pilgrimage, landing in Bountiful,
Utah and began capturing the beauty of his surroundings on canvas.
With each piece, the artist
spends hours laying his canvas with additive and subtractive methods:
sanding, varnishing, taping, adding paint, burnishing and removing layers
of paint. Henrie’s highly textural process lends to the depth and
sophistication of each work of art.
Henrie’s abstracted landscapes
of the weathered west embrace vibrant earth tones and windswept horizons,
capturing the vastness of this great area.
Aside from the western façade,
Cary draws inspiration from Italian frescos and his time spent in New York
museums.
Cary’s handsomely scaled
paintings convey a sense of vast, peaceful stretches of land with
suggestions of the way the mind works to perceive them. His use of
juxtaposed panels with the picture suggests a subject behind the subject.
His translucent bands form filtered lines of demarcation between
thoughts. Always, there are the planes, gradations, and shifts that keep
the image in motion. Cary Henrie is a dynamic artist who goes beyond
appearance and paints the idea of landscape.
His work is collected by
Whoopie Goldberg, Christy Walton of Walmart and Debbie Fields of Mrs.
Fields Cookies.