William Henderson, or ‘Bill’ Hendersen, as he was known familiarly, was born in Ringmer in 1941. He studied painting at Brighton College of Art (1959–1963), and at the Slade School of Fine Art (1963–1965). His time in academia was completed by stints as a visiting tutor at Winchester School of Art, the Chelsea College of Art, London, and the Faculty of Fine Art, South Glamorgan Institute, Cardiff between 1965 and 1981. Following this period, he was made Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, from 1981 to 2002.
Artistically, Henderson was a perceptively receptive painter, instrumentalising sensations. In the descriptions of his art, the words ‘pulsating’, ‘echoes’, ‘poundings’, ‘breathing spaces’, ‘assonance and dissonance’ and ‘diction’ are both reoccurring and meaningful, as they convey the artist’s love for music and dance. Another seminal pillar of his corpus is carefully constructed dichotomies such as delicacy and passion, emphasis and restraint, light and colour, set against darkness. Darkness in his work can take many forms, and is generally interpreted as an ode to vulnerability, and transparency towards the fragility of existence.
His artworks have been exhibited in shows such as the Hayward Annual, the Serpentine Summer Show, the Royal Academy Summer Shows and the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition.
Henderson passed away in 2019.
