I am Eric Henshall. I live in a cozy and over-stuffed terrace in Melbourne 's Fitzroy. It's where I grew-up, and though I've travelled much, I always come back to this sanctuary.
I've wanted to be an artist since before I could wash the paint from my own hands (it was either that or a knight or a writer or a whip-toting archaeologist). I'm doing what I love and that's good.
I have serious misgivings about the Art World, but would like to keep this site from bitterness. I realised recently that I suffer from ‘delusions of grandeur' or ‘visions' as my girlfriend puts it. This was a humbling realisation. Then again, if I don't have faith in me, why should anyone else??
I went to Art School.
I had a sort of epiphany recently.
At any rate, it was good for me.
I worry about things, but try not to do it too much.
In 2003 and 2004 I created a comic book. I have just finished the website for it, which you can enjoy by clicking here.
(or any of the numerous other links to it which I am now adding to this site)
I live in a society that proposes justice and freedom, but flirts with torture and re-elects pathological liars and human-rights abusers. But I have wine, food and friends and it's easy to forget.
The world is always beautiful, but sometimes it's hideously ugly as well.
What I see as willfully obtuse art and an unhealthy focus upon theory and pure novelty, had left me convinced that what we do is of immeasurably lesser socio-cultural value than music, literature, poetry, film, comics or video games. That basically, if we do anything of value, it can be better done in some other form. Then...
... During a meandering drive through the Mississippi Delta with my father, I was starved of visual art. After some time we hit upon New Orleans and its crop of galleries. I had not realized how much I missed paintings. The sheer riot of colour was air-conditioning in mid-summer. And I realized that visual art can do something no other form can - it can thrill us in a gentle and undemanding way that is all its own. It exists forever in its own moment, not needing a performer, not needing an audience, not needing a projector. It exists permanently and without interruption, waiting for the lucky chance that the right people will see it at the right time. And then it pounces. It...
... Struck me that no other form could do this. All other art exists in time (at least ‘more fully' in time), lasts only so long as it is played, performed, projected. Even books have endings. And other forms require some investment as one wants to see the film from the start, hear the song from the start. Visual art doesn't demand this. It is self-contained. ... It's just a thought - it's helpful for me.
The website is underway, and I'll be posting more information as it becomes available.
Said website is FINALLY finished and you can check it out by clicking here.
Or maybe it's the other way around?
I'm a homebody.
That's for when I've had a few drinks and I'm feeling invincible.
