The work of painters since Cezanne, like the Fauves, Abstract Expressionists., American Regionalists, California Impressionists, and others provided a somewhat chaotic assortment of possible directions to turn for gaining understanding about the relationship between vision, painting, and my own desire to paint. I quit art classes after realizing I had to work directly from nature in order to ever find what I was looking for. Working alone, I found I only kept repeating the visual ideas that fell short of the lifelike quality of color in nature. Nevertheless, I kept working at it, but with little hope for any real visible improvement in the color quality of my paintings

     As fate would have it, I was rejected from an important regional show and in the process of retrieving my work bumped into another rejectee who, as it turned out, was a Henry Hensche student. I could see from his rejected pieces that he knew something about color that I didn't. Later he showed me slides of Henry Hensche's work and some of the student's work and I knew I needed to study whatever this was. That chance meeting led me to Hensche at The Cape School of Art. .

     In my studies with Hensche I found that he gave me three principles that I could learn, apply, and rely on. The first two of these were directly about the lifelike color quality I had been trying to understand. As a student I had to learn first to begin massing color into simple passages of light and shade, eliminating narrative or illustrative detail, allowing the contrast of color between light and shade to express the light and atmospheric key, or envelope. Without that massing there could be no true key or color.

     This was something that I could really work with, a visual tool that if applied conscientiously, began to reveal substantial change in the color quality, and form quality, of a student's work. Working with these two principles, I began to see a third which Henry often spoke of. That is the principle of growth and change. The truth of what you are doing or how you are painting can in part be weighed by the degree it helps you to improve and grow in your efforts. If your approach in painting leads to repetition of unsatifactory results, then you are not growing, and growth is the natural result of learning.

     I could see this principle at work both in Henry's short demo studies, his very refined studio and landscape studies, and even in some of my own work. The whole of visual nature can be expressed at every level of study, and yet there is always more that we can learn and apply to our effort, as long as we have a fundamental principle at the core of our effort. A style or technique can be imitated and repeated but unless the student understands the underlying principle in a master's work they cannot understand how to approach that vision.

     The work of a master like Henry Hensche shows a great range of knowledge beyond the simple fundamentals of color and modeling that must be learned. For example, the rhythemic intervals of change in form, and the intervals of spacing in composition may bring a study to a very refined level, yet these relationships cannot be approached in lifelike color without a foundation in color modeling in the light key. Above all, his work shows the attainment of an inspired and beautiful vision that is sustained as a whole, whether during an abbreviated two hour demo study or a long winter studio composition. It is a vision built upon principles that can be learned.

Ken Massey, Embudo, NM