Name

Ian Henderson

Culture

Australian | English

Gender

Male

Birth date

1939

Birth place

England View on map Close map

Movements

UK 1939-69; Canada 1969-70; Australia 1972-85; England 1985-88; Australia from 1988

Occupations

Artist (painter)

Summary

Worked: Australia (NSW, QLD, SA, TAS, ACT). woodblock and lino prints.

Context

Australia

Web

http://www.ianhenderson-fineartist.com; http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings…; http://arts.sa.gov.au/artists/ian-henderson/

Website

Biography

Ian Henderson was born in the UK and studied art at Banbury, Oxford and Swansea Colleges of Art. In 1964 he became the first artist to a New Town Development Corporation, Skelmersdale in Lancashire. From there he was awarded a Gulbenkian Fellow in Creative Art (painting) at Keele University in Staffordshire. He taught at Leeds College of Art and then travelled to Canada to become first Artist in Residence at Brock University, Ontario. Returning to the UK he worked within art colleges and polytechnics, before coming to Australia in 1972. He has been described as a figure and landscape painter in all media and continues to exhibit his paintings on a regular basis throughout Australia and Asia. He established a visual studies studio at the University of Newcastle, and later held a senior position at the College of Art in Brisbane. In Canberra in 1979 he became Chief Graphic Designer for CSIRO, and during this period his paintings were exhibited in South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and also in the UK. He returned to the UK between 1985-88 and operated his painting studio, carrying out commissions, exhibiting his paintings, lecturing part-time in art, and working as a design moderator at a number of art colleges for the UK Business and Technician Education Council. His oil paintings in UK public collections can be seen at the BBC website. Returning to Australia he was appointed as artist in residence with a consultancy position in visual arts for an architectural firm responsible for Brisbane’s South Bank development, and in 1990 he accepted a position at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW as a Senior Lecturer in Visual Art & Design. Major exhibitions of paintings took place in Sydney, Canberra, and Brisbane, and in 1993 he gained a Doctorate in Creative Arts (DCA) in painting) from the University of Wollongong, NSW. His interests are wide and varied, and his paintings have focused on the nature of ‘placeness’ within landscape as well as genre paintings and the way in which the environment has been changed through habitation. For a short period Ian Henderson was an Artist in Residence at the famous Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania, and his exhibition ‘Unexpected Journeys in Tasmania’ held at the Salamanca Collection in Hobart in 1992 received important and favourable art reviews. Two of his major Tasmanian paintings are held with Burnie Regional Art Gallery, and at the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama, USA. Other acquisitions of his paintings are within several regional and city art galleries in Australia (Stanthorpe, Qld, Cowra, NSW, Muswellbrook, NSW, Murray Bridge, SA) and continue to be collected in the UK. Ian Henderson’s paintings appear in a number of publications, and within several catalogues of the UK Public Catalogue Foundation. He is an Honorary Life Member of the National Portrait Gallery and he continues to exhibit his paintings in Australia on a regular basis. Several of his genre paintings are held within the History Trust of South Australia Migration Museum and in the City of Port Adelaide and Enfield Council. Recent exhibitions have been held at the Kensington Gallery in Adelaide ('Arrivals & Departures', 2012), Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, South Australia ('Chanteuses de Charme', 2013) and at Celtic Skye Studio, Strathalbyn, SA ('Esoterica' exhibition, 2014). Ian Henderson lives and works in Braidwood, New South Wales.

[Ian Henderson, 15 May 2014]

Last Updated

15 Mar 2023