Louise Henderson

From Life exhibition is an exploration of Henderson’s life within New Zealand, including works made in other regions of the world including Paris and the Middle East. Each seperate room seems to explore a specific time of Henderson’s experiences within these countries.[1]

Henderson includes native plant species into the statement, letting the viewer in to see which parts she is focusing on, with works including such species as Dacrycarpus dacrydioides which is an endemic conifer to Aotearoa, otherwise known as Kahikatea or New Zealand white pine which we get the sense of by seeing its grey trunk. 

This inclusion of native and endemic flora is a possible idea which I am interested in bringing into my own practice, understanding Henderson’s use of the plants inclusion with in her work could be a way of building on the idea of naming and how botanists gave their own scientific names to plantain conjunction to the way indigenous Māori named these plants. 

Whilst viewing these works I started to look closely at the brush marks that Henderson creates, Henderson appears to play around with her brush marks as they come across as confident lines created to draw the viewers eyes around the canvas, weaving in and out of foliage. 

Also being played with is the way Henderson adds light washes of paint which reveals parts of the background, almost hidden but getting a sense of its presence within the work and finally hidden by final thicker paint marks. 

Carved marks created by the brush reveal layer’s underneath, this mixture of techniques helping me to be pushed out and pulled in to the painting, invested in the layers underneath coming through made me think back to my own works and how I could possibly play with these techniques of revealing undercoats of paint, an idea which could add to the ‘unfinished’ formal qualities of painting adding question of when the end is. 

References:

[1] Auckland Art Gallery. “Louise Henderson: From Life.” http://www.aucklandartgallery.com. https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/event/louise-henderson-from-life

Illustrations

Figures

(1) Henderson, Louise, From life: Bush series, 2020, Oil on canvas, installation, Auckland art gallery, Auckland, New Zealand, https://thespinoff.co.nz/art/15-02-2020/the-abiding-legacy-of-a-daring-parisian-modernist-who-shook-up-the-nz-art-world/