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Introducing Brigitte Hendrix
Brigitte Hendrix is an artist whose work explores the blurred line between mediated reality and personal imagination. Her process begins with collages made from found images and her own photographs, which she then translates into oil paintings. This approach allows her to reflect on the way today’s crises and events flood our perception, at once painfully close yet strangely distant.
Rather than depicting literal grievances, Hendrix captures the surreal, paralyzing sensation that arises from the constant stream of global ills and the casual indifference they are often met with. Her works often carry a symbolic charge, where moments of magic or whimsical surrealism soften harsh realities and open up space for meaning, reflection, and light. By turning fragmented media images into tactile, painted form, she reclaims them from abstraction and gives them new weight.
Brigitte Hendrix studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and continued exploring under the guidance of Arnout Killian. She currently lives and works in Amsterdam.
"While painting the figure of a refugee wrapped in a golden emergency blanket, Hendrix realized the stance echoed that of the fleeing peasant in Goya’s Witches’ Flight. This unexpected connection brought the allegories together: Goya’s vision of superstition, fear, and willful ignorance resonates with today’s migrant crisis. By adding the leg of a witch to her composition, Hendrix draws a line between past and present, exposing how societies continue to look away from suffering, whether under the shadow of tyranny or in the face of displacement and loss."
"This painting takes inspiration from the posture and aura of Waterhouse’s Cleopatra, reimagined for the present. A queen reclining, absorbed by her phone, as the red glow of a burning world seeps into the scene. The image speaks to the detachment and distraction with which we often meet catastrophe, distant enough to scroll past, yet close enough to illuminate everything."
"I’m very proud to finally present two incredible oil paintings by my dear friend Brigitte Hendrix. Coming from fashion, Brigitte has always had a meticulous eye for detail, I remember being struck by this already in her first shows for her co-owned label And Beyond. Over the past few years, she has fully immersed herself in her new passion: painting. I’ve watched her work evolve across her studios, each canvas revealing a growing depth and precision. Many of her early pieces found their way to an eager circle of collectors and friends, a testament to how immediately her work resonates.
Brigitte is not only a skilled artisan, committed to mastering the medium of oil painting, but also a subtle and powerful storyteller. Her work captures the pulse of our time, observing the world around us with a quiet intensity that feels both poetic and real. She’s a brilliant observer, modest and thoughtful, never loud, yet always clear in her message.
Through her eyes, we are invited to pause and really look at the world we live in, at the things we take for granted and at the roles we play as bystanders. Her paintings often balance between harsh realities and moments of tenderness or surreal beauty, as if to ask: can we still find beauty, even in a fractured world?
In Brigitte’s work, fragments of media images and personal imagination merge into something human, reflections on distance, empathy, and attention in a time when everything feels both near and far. Perhaps her paintings are a whispered call to awareness, a gentle reminder to see more clearly."
