Georgia Mountain Laurel • March 2010

                                  

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  Get your tickets to Bloomin' A Musical Celebration of Youth and Renewal to benefit Richard's Kids & Kid's Place by calling 706.982.9197 or visit the Rabun County Chamber of Commerce or the Macon County Chamber of Commerce. Seating is limited! Click here to visit www.BloominShow.com

 Click here to download our 2010 Media Kit  "Advertising is completely unnecessary... unless you hope to make money" Jef Richards   

 


 

MARCH COVER ARTIST - Judith Hendrix      

            

 When Rabun County artist Judith Hendrix took watercolor lessons, she was taught to paint in the background first. She does it the other way around and doesn’t consider her technique backwards at all; instead, she believes it gives life to the painting.
It’s not the first time in her life that Judith has “broken the rules” for a good reason. When deafness traditionallydictated that she should lead a life out of the mainstream, Judith said “NO!” Trained to read lips, how to put others at ease and how to function in a hearing world allowed her to advance in a corporate environment where many didn’t even realize she was hearing-impaired.
Nowhere was that advantage ever more precious, however, than on her deck on the north face of Screamer Mountain when, thanks to medical technology and an implant that actually allowed her to hear, Judith heard the birds singing.
That was double validation, because Judith has spent a lifetime painting endangered species of animals and birds, not many of which are native to Georgia. And she painted those various wild inhabitants by her rules. 

 The animal was the main character in the painting. Just as she paints this main character first, Judith begins with the eyes and works outward from there. Until she was willing to give up the rules, she found her work somewhat stifled. “Once I said, ‘to heck with the rules, the inspirations started to flow.’”

But the artist whose frogs and other assorted creatures of nature hasn’t always lived on the mountain with the beautiful view. Nothing could have been more unlike Rabun County than the Middle East where she lived first as a child, and later as a wife and mother. Her father was in the oil business, so Judith grew up among the sand and the traditions of another culture. She speaks Arabic and Farsi, skills that came in handy in her adult life when her executive husband was posted in that region as well. 

It was also there that she began to paint in oils – many Iranian and Arabian scenes -- a practice she has since abandoned. “Oils are too smelly, and they take too long to dry,” she explains.  Instead, she continued her art in the medium of watercolor – as soon as she found the solution to her creative roadblocks – with more paintings than she can count. And along the way, the young woman who graduated college with a double major in art and business – she wanted to be a dress designer – accomplished a few other things besides. Instead of designing dresses, she became a dress buyer and continued to indulge in her art, a fascination since childhood and a serious pursuit beginning in college. And she continued to advance in the business world, which she left for good 20 years ago.

Now the self-described seashore girl could not feel more at home in the Georgia mountains, where she lives with husband Frank Holden and their two dogs. Frank already had a get-away cabin on Screamer when they met in Atlanta a number of years back. After their marriage, when weekends weren’t long enough and Atlanta felt too foreign, they decided to relocate permanently.
Judith says she couldn’t be happier. And while the smell of curry and the sight of sand will always transport her back to another life, it’s the life she has now, pursuing her painting, designing exquisite miniature boxes and other quizzical objects that fulfill her. But she isn’t finished. Judith is toying with moving into acrylic painting and she continues to capture her endangered species with her brush.
Judith Hendrix hears the call of life, repeatedly. And she answers, but under her own rules.

by John Shivers


Contact Judith by e-mail at jhholden@yahoo.com.