Ian Henderson DCA
Fine Artist (painter), author and illustrator.
This is a site for paintings drawn from lived experiences, memories, and imagination. I am a fine artist (painter), also an author, getting inspiration from landscape, social realism, past in present—and associated genre work. The site includes paintings, illustrations, drawings, and writings. The icons below are the individual links to pages giving more information on the subjects I have been involved with:
Ian Henderson was born in Cheltenham, England, in 1939 and has lived and worked as a painter in the
United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, where he settled
and became a citizen in 1975. His career spans more than six decades and includes major exhibitions,
university appointments, fellowships and representation
in significant public collections. Alongside painting he has worked as an educator, researcher and writer,
but his studio practice has always remained central — grounded in landscape, memory, community and the emotional experience of place.
Judy Cassab / George Foxhill / Alan Warren / Derek Hyatt
“ The past isn’t something we visit — it’s something we carry.”
There are certain times and certain events that turn our focus from what we thought was important, to what we now know is really important. People we meet can instigate changes in our ideas, and reinforce what we thought we already knew. Mostly we only recognise this in hindsight. On the one hand we lose time in processing what we have learnt. On the other hand we need the time to fully comprehend what we need to know. I have met painters who have passed on their knowledge, not only through their paintings, but in the way in which they have influenced their colleagues through interaction and discussion. I have listed four such painters whose ideas, thoughts and actions have influenced my own thinking — and my own painting. I was lucky to have known these fine artists as colleagues.
Above: Working in the studio.
Right: ‘Mine Alone is the Land’. (Fy Unig yu’r Wlad’) 43 x 42.5 cm oil, collage, graphite and pen on Board. 2022/2023.
The painting is based on a Celtic song dedicated to the artist’s painting activity. It was written and performed by two Welsh students from the Department of Music at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales.
Part lyric:
“Mine alone the chill air seeping, Mine alone the soft buds sleeping. Mine alone the beaded grass — The ragged peaks and the wild mountain pass.”
A Canberra architect once said to me “Ian, you have too many skills.”
Having just returned to Canberra after three years in the UK, I had accepted an architectural illustration commission from an architect I knew, while I re-focussed on life back in Australia. Some time later it occurred to me that his comment regarding “skills” was rather strange. How was it possible to have “too many skills”? As far as I was concerned, my one/main skill was in painting — I mean, that’s why I had gone to art school. But having chosen, what could be called ‘a liberal arts’ subject in fine art painting, I also recognised that many competences (even subjective ones) were tied to my painting capability. I would not have been able to complete architectural illustrations had I not a painterly acumen to complete what was required in such a commission. In effect painting was the skill that I had — any others were auxiliary. Even graphic design work (always tempting in its scope and likely remuneration) was ancillary. A 1964 ‘Shell’ county guide commission had proved that.
I suppose the closest accomplishment to that of fine art painting, are the ones of graphic or illustration. This in addition to all of the components that could be considered part of drawing and painting—and problem solving. A completely different mindset. All these I had experienced at one time or another at art college, and as a professional painter. Although I completed graphic and illustrative commissions, mostly, successfully, they did leave me feeling that I was splitting myself into different parts. The whole painter became the part time graphic designer, illustrator, and dare I say, teacher. All activities moving ideas and the motivation away from the main skill. I know that many artists feel this way, or brush it off, or pretend that it is nothing. It is something. I have admiration for painters who can move between skills — but, deep down I really believe that they feel a loss, of what – integrity? What a thought!
Well I need to mention Graham Sutherland. What a fine line he made between his natural instinct as a painter with his wonderful Pembrokeshire studies, and his crossover from graphic design, into painting (as problem solving) as opposed to painting (as exploration and discovery). I think we were both adept at both these, but I do believe that one takes away from the other. I have tried to further explain this in my short essay ‘A Fine Line’. (Please read this as a continuity of the ideas expressed here.)
Selected Works
The selection of fourteen paintings has been taken from the personal collection of works put together from various painting exhibitions since 1981. In this display they are the smaller paintings and studies that have come from earlier solo exhibitions. These are the ‘Figure in Landscape’ series, the ‘Peter Grimes’ collection of paintings, the recollections of ‘place’ works, and the most recent ‘Eyecatcher’ exhibition. The paintings shown here arise from a long, continuous practice concerned with place, memory, and the social conditions that shape everyday life. While rooted in specific locations and moments, the intention has always been to move beyond description toward something more universal. These are small but important ‘link’ paintings balancing earlier and later work. Larger works from our personal collection is a possibility for showing later.
(William Blake: “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.”
‘Planes over Cheltenham’ is a 2015 oil painting partly made up from the memories of the town of Cheltenham in the UK where this artist lived as a child from 1939-48. It was the Second World War period, September 1939 – September 1945. My memories are those of a child experiencing the United Kingdom privations of that time. These English hardships focussed my young attention on such things as ration books, fire extinguishers, blackouts, gas masks, shelters. In addition, American servicemen – top servicemen billeted in Cheltenham’s ‘Queens Hotel’ … planes, ARP wardens, second hand clothes, etc. “Make and mend” became important, not as a stipulation but as a desirable activity (that incidentally, continued long after WW2 had finished. I recall wearing second hand clothes, shoes for school, size ‘9’ from a friend’s mother to fit a size ‘8’ foot. ‘The Queen’s Hotel’, illustrated in the painting, was the permanent residence at that time of senior USA servicemen. Outside the front of the hotel was one, or even two, searchlight positions pointing at overhead planes (those that in fact I never saw.) What I did see though, was the removal of the metal railings that surrounded the Winter Gardens in front of the hotel — all taken for the war effort, along with a giant size metal gun from the battle of Sebastopol, placed as a memory, now gone — but not forgotten. It was a memorable time even for a young child. How subtle the past weaves its way into the present.
“Thank you for visiting. Paintings are generally for sale. For enquiries or comments: solstice39@bigpond.com.” Site last updated February 2026.