I was walking today, thinking about how things have happened in my life. So much wasn’t planned. Things came along, I stepped into them, and before I knew it, I was doing it for better or worse.
Looking back, I’m amazed at how things worked out. But they weren’t always glory days. I didn’t always know where I was going or whether things would work out.
I kept doing it while making course corrections along the way. Now I’m spending more time thinking about what comes next, but I’m already doing what I want to do.
I’ve been noticing something similar in my drawings. Working with pen and ink makes me slow down. Every line matters. I have to look at what’s happening, think about what I’m doing, and decide where the next line goes.
It challenges me.
Maybe that’s why being present came to mind today. Whether I’m drawing or walking, there’s something about paying attention to what’s happening around me. I guess that is called presence.
I have confidence in sunshine,
I have confidence in rain.
I have confidence that spring will come again!
Besides which, you see, I have confidence in me!
When I was teaching, my students used to get a kick out of the fact that every once in a while I would break into song.
One of my favorites was I Have Confidence from The Sound of Music.
I’ve been thinking about that song lately. I’ve also been thinking about confidence, trust, and résumés.
A résumé can list what I’ve done. It can remind me of exhibitions, teaching, projects, and accomplishments. But confidence doesn’t come from a list of what I’ve already done.
It comes from trusting what I can do next.
I’ve been working on a new series of small drawings and paintings, and I’m pleased to say that some of them will be going to New York in December for Collective Z’s Small Works show.
I’m excited to be showing with Collective Z again. It’s a wonderful small gallery, and I’ve really enjoyed working with Alex Z. Wang.
Will every piece I make be the best piece I’ve ever made? Probably not.
That’s not really the point.
Whatever comes out of that process, it will be the best of me.
Bill Hendricks
Three works in progress from the Small Works series, 2026. Pen and ink on paper.
Collective Z is a contemporary gallery and project space on Broome Street in New York, dedicated to artists working in states of transition, tension, and becoming.
I find myself reminiscing about the past more often these days.
I think about Christopher Street and the wonderful life that was lived there. I think about the friends I made, and the friends who became family, during one of the most intense periods in LGBTQ+ history—the AIDS epidemic.
So many of those friends are gone now.
But I still think about them. I remember them. And I think about the wonderful life I have had, and the life I am still having, and how much fun it would have been to share some of this life with them.
Maybe that has something to do with how Marsha P. came into being.
The original abstract drawing—the first stage of what became Marsha P.An early stage, as I explored tinting beneath the drawing and bringing areas back.A middle stage of the drawing, as the eyes, smile, and surrounding colors became more defined.Marsha P. — finished mixed-media drawing by Bill Hendricks, 2025.
The drawing did not begin as Marsha P. Johnson.
I know that.
It began as a very abstract sort of image. I was working with shapes and lines without any intention of making a portrait.
Then I began to see something.
First I saw the smile.
At this point, I was exploring how to tint underneath the drawing—putting color down and then bringing areas back.
As I worked, I began to see the eyes.
And all along there was a certain joy in the drawing that kept coming through.
I continued drawing, painting, changing things, covering things, uncovering things. The more I worked, the more something from my own history seemed to be coming forward.
My past became present.
Marsha was part of the world I remember.
I don’t mean that Marsha and I were close friends. We weren’t.
She was someone who passed through my life.
But she was a character on Christopher Street, just as I was a character on Christopher Street—working in a gallery among lots of other characters I loved dearly.
There was something about seeing her emerge from this drawing that gave me a way of becoming involved with that world again.
Not simply remembering it.
Participating in it.
For a little while, the distance between then and now became smaller.
The finished work became Marsha P.
For me, it carries more than the image of one person. It carries something of Christopher Street, of friendship, of loss, of survival, and of the extraordinary joy that existed alongside some very difficult years.
Maybe that is why the joy in the drawing matters so much to me.
The work later traveled to New York, where it was exhibited during Pride Month. The original Marsha P. is now available through Collective Z Gallery on Artsy.
But when I look at it, that isn’t what I think about first.
I think about the people.
I think about the life we lived.
Sometimes, while making a drawing, the past finds its way back into the room.
Currently at Collective Z
Collective Z is currently presenting Second Nature, bringing together painters Gwen Yip and Spencer Patrick. Their work considers the spaces New Yorkers move through—from the public world of subway platforms to the private interiors where people retreat.
Second Nature is on view through August 29, 2026, at Collective Z, 325 Broome Street, New York.
A friend, who is a Friend at the Minneapolis Friends Meeting, called me today and shared Carroll’s quote with me. What struck me about this quote is that it addresses an experience and the concept of time. I have read in several places that, according to quantum physics, time is not a linear analog; instead, it is one moment stacked on top of another, and we experience time all at once. Therefore, our planning and setting of goals is a form of remembering a time in the future. I know, deep, huh? I am not a physicist, but these concepts inspire my work as an artist.
Door05192024, Mixed Media, Pen and Digital, Hendricks 2024
