"What follows is the development narrative for the works in this exhibition. Henderson applies multiple layers of paint upon the support, some flat and others with the distinctive texture of a nap roller. At this stage the textures of these layers are indescribable to the eye; some of these applications cover the entire surface of the painting while others are positioned in particular quadrants or hemispheres. These applications are applied without obvious method or system, which is also to say that they are freed from operating under any unified aesthetic aim. Each layer individually, and all layers collectively, are not in service of an overt, successive, straight composition, instead, their primary function is to cover that which has been placed prior. At this stage, the interaction between applications is totalizing: all encompassing and indiscriminate-each are an effacement. Expectations of presence and absence, doing and undoing are beginning to be overturned.
At this stage, Henderson paints onto the canvas with a brush, laying down vibrant, gestural marks that are responsive to the visible ground and other figured accumulations on the surface. Henderson continues forward. Atop what might elsewhere be seen as a finished work, additional layers of paint are applied to cover that which already exists. The gestural abstract brushstrokes are overlaid with new application of paint of unvarying color and unwavering coverage: the figure is obscured by a new ground. The evidence of the artist--his mark-is sandwiched between multiple layers of uniformity and regularity. The painting dries, and its progression of layers cure and combine into one another.
Once dry, the work is at its midway point. Henderson begins to delicately remove layers of the painting, finely abrading the surface to reveal previously laid layers, indiscriminately unearthing, in part, the previous. Colors and textures have interacted in unexpected ways: given the process of moving backwards, the material reveals itself in ways never before experienced in the sequence of application.”
- Andrew Blackley