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In both his paintings and sculptures, McHenry seeks to install a sense of timelessness – evoking the ancient and embracing the mysticism of artefacts – objects shaped by time, wear and imperfection. His work rejects the pristine precision of newly manufactured objects in favor of something raw, tactile, and human. Traces of the hand and signs of wear imbue his pieces with a quiet life of their own – a rare humanity, increasingly scarce in the modern world.
Balancing control and spontaneity, he follows the sculptor David Nash’s philosophy of working “tight and loose” – aiming for structure while allowing intuition to guide the final form. He strives for an ideal, but never lets perfectionism override instinct. Stepping back to see the whole is just as important as refining the details.
McHenry employs age-old painting techniques, fostering a deep connection with the past. The artist prepares surfaces with rabbit skin gesso, grinds raw pigment and mixes it with egg yolk – methods described as early as the 1st century by Pliny. These materials, drawn directly from nature, bring an organic unpredictability to his work. Each element – wood, pigment, chalk, egg – carries its own character. McHenry arranges them into a state of harmony until, through their imperfections and interplay, balance emerges.
Influenced by folk art, medieval and Renaissance frescoes, as well as modernist design, his work considers alternative histories, imagining how abstract Impressionist ideals might have unfolded in 16th-century Europe.
Through this approach, McHenry’s paintings and sculptures transcend time, existing somewhere between the ancient and the contemporary, the material and the mystical.
