Henry Ward’s vividly coloured abstract work is an exploration of the structure of painting and the act of making. In works hewn from a process of layering pigment, laid out in rapid movement the paintings come together as if pieces — perfectly configured to create blocks and roundels of colour and patterning. Brushstrokes and black graphic areas of painterly drawing demarcate areas of the surface allowing a sense of balance and imbalance as well as unexpected beauty. Geometry seems toppled, strange structures emerge from paint on paint, revealing the artist’s way of working “a wrapping of materials, juxtaposed with a balancing and ‘wedging’ of form, shape, texture and colour.”
Ward describes his practice as beginning with three sites: the kitchen table, his garden shed and the studio. The artist notes: “The relationship between these different sites is a very important one. Increasingly, there is a dialogue between the works on paper made in the shed and the larger canvases in the studio.”
The Kitchen Table Sculptures are an exploration of form that exists between the “real and unrecognisable.” Made entirely of found materials from walks around the city, these small experimental objects are made on the artist’s kitchen table and have developed into artworks in their own right; square form meets round, a twisting of structure, shape and material contrast that is, in turn, mirrored in the two dimensional works as well. If assemblage and sculptural presence is recognisable throughout Ward’s practice, this is because there is a process of building inherent in Ward’s approach.
Indeed, it is in a simple overcrowded shed where Ward paints on paper — a moment of “pure production”. Here it is materiality and the life of paint that reigns. “The paintings are rapidly made, un-precious, often over-painted, and very intuitive. Representation is eliminated in the painterly act and yet, there remains a sense of architectonic imagery. After all, it is this sculptural quality of Ward’s work that reminds us of the painterly yet structural scenes of the late twentieth century master painter Philip Guston.
Finally, Ward’s studio serves as place of contemplation as well as an even deeper immersion in painting. The works made in this space generally take longer to work out although Ward shares that his approach here is, in general, rapid, informed by spontaneous responsive mark making. If Ward’s work seems to be composed of puzzles it is because some of the larger works began as such. Assembling composition includes taking the Shed Paintings on paper “as component parts, bringing them together in large multi-piece composites and then working back into them as a single painting.” While this description might seem a logical outcome of artistic practice and planning, it is the achievement of balance and imbalance that distinguishes Ward’s uniquely planar treatment of form and colour. A destabilisation of composition is achieved by painting over pigment, laying armature or architectural and figural form over areas of abstract colour.
In this place of plastic beauty that experiments with pictorial structure, Ward has created a body of work that has a singular energy and iconography of abstraction and form. As such, the power of Henry Ward’s paintings resides in the alchemical process of making art that only reveals itself in the act itself: “I am literally painting to find out what I am painting.”
Rosa JH Berland
