Artist Bendel Hydes, a native of the Cayman Islands, describes his work as “concerned with the sensory world of sight, sound and touch, and in the visual metaphors thereby produced to cerebrally enhance physical and conceptual possibilities.”
In other words, it’s work you can feel.
Many of his influences, he says, are the memories of his childhood in Cayman.
“When you grow up in an environment like Cayman, which provides you with an open-ended idealism, that was the blessing of Cayman,” he said. “There were limitations and simplicities and all that, but you never really had any real hardships. That also kind of borders on ignorance is bliss.
“That joy of childhood… does a lot for a young mind, especially if he has the capacity to imagine.”
Mr. Hydes, who used to read encyclopedias as a child, went to New Orleans when he was six to attend school for a year. It was when he visited the US that the world opened up to him, if only for the little things like having a milkshake, which wasn’t readily available in 1950s Cayman.
It was his mother who encouraged him in art, and he recalls that “she was very much about doing things realistically. To her, everything had to basically look like a photograph.”
So, he started drawing from photographs, but he was discouraged by the limitations in that type of work.
“I attribute that very greatly to my moving towards abstraction,” he said.
His latest work, the Circumnavigating series, is a set of 12 pieces that are similar in tone but different in the motivation behind them.
“Each of those paintings represents 30 degrees of longitude, kind of a slice of the earth,” he said. “This imaginary journey was going around the globe.”
One of the 30 degrees is a tribute to a close friend of Mr. Hydes from Estonia. Another is a representation of the Middle East.
“It really represents some type of conflict. I call it Entrenchment,” he said. “The canvas is broken up into three different parts representing the three different religions.”
Of course, these are afterthoughts. The explanations come after the work. Mr. Hydes tries to express his unconscious and super-conscious on the canvas.
“What art does is try to get those [super-conscious expressions] out,” he said. “Painters tend to paint these unconscious feelings, and make the narrative afterwards.”
He says that he needs certain motivations to produce work.
“Our role here on earth is to take from nature, be inspired by nature, but we have to use it, and try not to exploit it too much,” he said. “Nature is an incredible motivator.”
Mr. Hydes now lives in New York City, the epicentre of the art world, and his work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including the Commonwealth Institute, London, and the Museum of Cagnes-sur-Mur, France.
His paintings are in the collections of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and many other private collectors.
He recently returned to Cayman for the 40th anniversary of his high school graduation and to donate to the Cayman Heart Fund.
He has also contributed to the establishment of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands and the Cayman National Cultural Foundation. Though he enjoys his visits, he says he may never return to live in Cayman.
“I have a lot of pain here (in Cayman),” he said. “I have to solve that pain.”
So he turns back to his work, his painting. He returns to what he knows, leaving the memories of Cayman as his influences.
“An artist always goes back to making art.”
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