Catherine Jenna Hendry (CJ Hendry) (born 1988) is a contemporary Australian artist known for hyper-realistic, large-scale renderings of luxury objects using a self-developed scribbling technique.
Biography
Hendry was born in South Africa and raised in Brisbane, Australia.[1] She studied architecture at Queensland University of Technology and finance at University of Queensland in Australia, before dropping out to pursue an art career in 2013.[2][3] Hendry lived and practiced in Brisbane prior to moving to New York in 2015.[3]
Hendry's practice started as a hobby. She has no formal art training and considers herself "not very creative."[4] Her works are primarily hyper-realistic, large scale ink drawings of luxury objects that sometimes take 200 hours to complete.[5] Working with ink on paper her pieces are achieved through layers of what she refers to as scribbles.[4][2][6] She uses photographs with edited saturated lighting, a ruler and a pen as a guide for their placement.[7] Hendry credits her fame to social media attributing her first sale in 2014, a depiction of RM Williams boots that sold for $10,000, to Instagram.[4] An executive from Australia's Macquarie Bank paid $50,000 USD for a drawing of a rumpled Gucci shopping bag. More widely-known owners of her pieces include Kanye West, who bought a piece of a $100 USD bill with a portrait of his face drawn on it alongside iconic fashion designer Vera Wang.[8]
Back in 2015 she dipped a pair of $9,000 USD Nike Air Mags in a bucket of black paint in order to use as a study for a hyperrealistic drawing.[8]
In 2016 Hendry expanded her practice with the launch of a collaboration with fashion house Christian Louboutin.[9][10] The resulting exhibition, held in the Anita Chan Lia-ling Gallery at the Fringe Club in Hong Kong as part of the 2017 Art Basel, marked Hendry's first time working with colour and wax pencil.[11] The difference, the artist explains, is that "color is very difficult, because you've got to use multiple different colors to create one."[12]
