CJ HENDRY
The Hyper-Photorealist With a Penchant for Play
An artist known for her hyper-realistic drawings and immersive installations, Cj Hendry is proud of her unconventional path into the art world. In 2012, she was living in her hometown of Brisbane and studying finance in college. Art was a hobby, and she primarily shared her work on Instagram, but when her drawings garnered attention and followers, Hendry decided to drop out of school to pursue art full-time. The decision was clearly the right one. To date she’s staged 10 independent solo shows, with a Parisian show and a documentary film about her interactive art scavenger hunt in the works. “My approach to each piece is the same regardless of the subject,” she told Art Plugged, explaining that she finds inspiration everywhere in her day-to-day life. “I take 99 percent of the reference photos I draw from. My favorite drawings are often where I create the image, as opposed to drawing an object that can be purchased.”
Projects
Beyond her drawings, Cj Hendry is also known for encouraging her fans to actively view her work through interactive installations. “I would love for each original artwork to only be able to be viewed as the entire experience; it brings such a greater depth to the genre of hyperrealism,” Cj says. Take, for example, her 2023 exhibition Plaid, for which she created a huge, immersive playground inside a 5,000-square-foot venue in Brooklyn. Her 2021 exhibition Blonde, which explored the transformative powers of wigs, took place in a plush pink beauty salon with 5,000 wigs in 200 different styles to complement Cj’s intricate pencil drawings of multi-colored hairpieces. And two years earlier, Rorschach led guests through a white bouncy castle (with vibes that were equal parts funhouse and madhouse) to reach her inkblot test-inspired drawings. Visitors even donned hospital band-like bracelets reading “Rorschach Psychological Institute.”
