ARTIST STATEMENT:

I suppose it all began with small blocks of wood.  Dad would bring home odds and ends from the shop at school, and I'd play with them.  I loved to make things, and still do. I didn't foresee a life as an artist from a young age.  Growing up in a working-class family in rural New
Brunswick there were no precedents to encourage such thoughts.  During the early school years I was praised for some of my creative endeavours (a little encouragement can be a dangerous thing).   In grade eight I developed rheumatic fever.  I had to spend several months in hospital, and several more at home in bed. This was a world before cable television, and video games.   I filled this time with drawing and painting.   This interest continued.  By the time high school rolled around, one of my favorite things to do on a Friday evening was to take the bus from Oromocto to Fredericton and visit the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.   Dali, Kreighoff, Colville , Pratt, Forrestall, ... became friends through these special outings.   After high school, I enrolled in Business Administration at UNB.   I had no natural inclinations towards business, but it seemed a safer route than a life in art. 

When I finished that degree I knew I would always wonder if I didn't give the artistic side of my nature a chance.   I enrolled at Mount Allison in the Fine Arts program in 1981.   I loved my  time at Mt. A.    Not only did I get to stretch my artistic legs, but I met my wife there.  

After Mt. A. I went back to UNB and took a Bachelor of Education Degree. Since then I've been teaching art at the elementary, secondary levels and high school and continuing to create, and exhibit work.  I now live in Charlottetown , PEI . with my wife, Sylvia, and our two children, Mark and Julia   -- and I still love to make things!

Andrew Henderson was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick in 1957. He had an early interest in art. As a teenager Andrew had a bout with rheumatic fever. During the months of isolation that followed the seeds were planted for what would become a life long passion. Gifts of paper, markers, and paints provided the physical tools to let his imagination soar.

He later received his formal artistic training at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick.

The subjects of Henderson's paintings are ordinary, a kitchen chair, a child's castaway shoes, stainless steel cookie tins, and fragile glass decorations of Christmas past. Often these things are broken, mere fragments, shards of what they once were. In them Henderson sees a reservoir of beauty that remains intact, despite the passage of time and neglect.

Preserves also continue to be an interest. The beauty of red currant jelly, the way the sweetness of a summer harvest can be saved and enjoyed in the midst of a harsh winter day. The idea that we try to preserve other things that are important to us has led Henderson to new images of more personal preserves.

Andrew Henderson resides in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island with his wife and two children.