I work primarily as a painter. I am interested in exploring the language of paint, the possibilities of the material. Paintings may take many months, even years, to complete and marry forms and colours from one moment in time to those from another, creating a discourse.

I am interested in making paintings that refer to objects and spaces in the real world without being nameable, I want things to feel familiar and alien at the same time. The suggestion of a character has become a dominant theme.

My three paintings in “A Winter’s Tale” are all recently completed works. I’m interested in how the paintings change over time, as they go through iterations involving successive layers, erasures, and additions. I am fascinated by paint and the way in which it can do multiple things simultaneously, being both material on a flat surface and creating the illusion of objects and space. I see painting as a way of discovering what it is that I want to paint. I don’t set out with something in mind, rather allow the process of painting, and the dialogue with the material, to evolve into a work.

Henry Ward is a London-based painter. He studied at Winchester School of Art, Goldsmiths College and Middlesex University. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally and has been shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize four times. In 2023 he was Artist in Residence at The Albers Foundation, Connecticut. His work is held in the Soho House collection and private collections in the UK and abroad. His monographs include Shed Paintings and Bethany (Anomie Publications, 2025).