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HomeNewsArchivesMAGAZINE EXPLAINS INSPIRATION FOR HENLE'S ART

MAGAZINE EXPLAINS INSPIRATION FOR HENLE'S ART

Sept. 28, 2001 – St. Croix artist and art gallery owner Maria Henle is the subject of an article in the October issue of Caribbean Travel & Life magazine that also features a color photograph of one of her oil paintings.
Readers who have never met her or seen her work in person get to learn some things from the widely circulated publication that Henle's friends and neighbors on St. Croix may not know about how she got started creating her signature multi-image etchings and paintings.
"On a rainy day in 1982," the article begins, "artist Maria Henle climbed to the top of Paricutin volcano in Mexico and drew two scenes. The first was the way the volcano looked then; the second was how it looked 40 years earlier when it erupted in a fury of red-hot lava. Back at her studio, she decided to combine the images into one etching; and she hasn't changed her technique since.
"Today, Henle is famous for her multilayered paintings of the Caribbean. She juxtaposes two or more scenes to turn what would be a representational image into something abstract."
Henle, the daughter of famed photographer Fritz Henle, grew up on St. Croix, the article relates. After studying and working in such arts capitals as Florence, Italy, and New York City, she chose to return to the island to open her own gallery and work space, the Maria Henle Studio, in downtown Christiansted on Company Street.
The island is so small that you're never far from a view of the sea," she told freelance writer Maxine Rose Schurr, "and there's a great variation in topography — from the dry east end to the open vista of the south shore to the lush slopes of the north that drop right into the sea."
While Henle typically overlays two images to create her works, Schurr tells Caribbean Travel & Life readers, she has combined as many as five in larger pieces. The gallery, which during season "also showcases select artists in one-person exhibits," Schurr writes, "has become one of the cultural highlights of a visit to St. Croix."

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