Photo Courtesy of Haines Gallery
There’s something exhilarating about Mike Henderson’s new works at Haines Gallery in San Francisco. I love these paintings. They are totemic and tactile; sacred objects almost. They command reflection. It is something about the manipulation of paint and the element of surface and beneath surface that gives these objects a certain breathing magic, like that sense of discovery one has when one opens a box long closed. There is that rush of air from another time that expands and envelopes you and you look and greet history with fresh eyes. These paintings feel like that. They are distinctly modern, but it is hard to place them in an age. They feel nostalgic and foreign and yet strangely familiar. Like excavations of memory, or one’s own history peeled back revealing all the many layers that form the whole.
For more information about Mike Henderson and Haines Gallery please visit their website and check out their Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Haines-Gallery/71804775934
There’s also some really terrific video on Mike on KQED.
http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/profile.jsp?essid=17526
Photo Courtesy of Haines Gallery
Mike Henderson Dance Deets 2014, Oil on Canvas, 62″ x 51″
Photo Courtesy of Haines Gallery
Mike Henderson New Wilderness 2014, Oil on Canvas, 72″ x 60″
New Wilderness (Detail)
Mike Henderson Gothic Grace 2013, Oil on Canvas, 64″ x 32″
Mike Henderson Between the Cliffs 2013, Oil on Canvas, 24″ 18″
Mike Henderson The HIgh Road 2009, Oil on Canvas, 46″ x 36″
Photo Courtesy of Haines Gallery
Mike Henderson The Act of Seeing 2014, Oil on Canvas, 38″ 16″
The Act of Seeing (Detail)
The Artist's Periscope 