Training and Early Career

Henry grew up in a creative household, with a sculptor father and a mother who painted. An early experience of painting the landscape during a family holiday helped establish an interest that would continue throughout her life. As a teenager, she attended evening painting classes with Valerie Olsen, before studying sculpture at Sydney College of the Arts.

After art school, Henry completed a teaching qualification and worked as an art teacher while continuing to develop her own practice. Selection for the Wynne Prize in 2000 marked an important turning point, bringing her work into the Art Gallery of New South Wales and strengthening her commitment to painting. She later left full-time teaching to devote more time to her art and family.

Living Within the Landscape

The valley surrounding Henry’s studio is an active part of her working life. Changing seasons, shifting light, birdsong, dense vegetation, and the movement of water continually offer new material. Photography, sound recordings, sketches, and studies in watercolor, gouache, and pastel help her gather these experiences. In the studio, she draws on this accumulated material, allowing remembered impressions to shape the painting.

Her process also involves a direct physical encounter with the environment. In the practice described for her 2022 exhibition Further Afield, Henry immersed unstretched canvases in the creek running through her property, then laid them outdoors while developing initial passages with watercolor and pigment. Once dry, the canvases returned to the studio to be stretched and worked further with oil paint and wax. Water, drying, and successive layers became part of the development of the surface.

Henry’s movement toward abstraction has accompanied a deepening interest in the emotional possibilities of painting. In discussing To Paint Is to Love, she described an increasingly instinctive approach, allowing gestures and simplified forms to carry greater weight. Her response to the Australian landscape includes its vulnerability, the effects of bushfire, and the beauty of regeneration. These experiences give her paintings a personal dimension that extends beyond the appearance of a particular place.

Recognition and Exhibitions

Henry has been selected for the Wynne Prize on multiple occasions and was an Archibald Prize finalist in 2016 with her portrait Louise Olsen, a beautiful summary. Her recognition also includes finalist selections for the Paddington Art Prize and the Tattersall’s Club Art Prize. Her career encompasses an extensive record of solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally.

An important early connection with Australian Galleries developed when Edmund Capon, then director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, brought Henry’s work to the attention of Stuart Purves. Henry subsequently joined the gallery’s roster, placing her practice within an established context of Australian painting.

International presentations have included The Space Between at Olsen Gruin in New York in 2020 and To Paint Is to Love at Gruin Gallery in Los Angeles in 2022. Her exhibitions with Findlay Galleries include Harvesting the Valley II in New York in 2024, Recent Works in Palm Beach in 2025, and Living Palette in New York in 2025. These exhibitions have introduced American audiences to the continuing development of her landscape painting.

International Collections and Publications

Henry’s paintings have entered private collections across the United States, Europe, Asia, and New Zealand. At a successful New York exhibition, collector Christian Louboutin acquired more than half of the works. Designer Akira Isogawa has connected her landscapes with memories of gardens in Kyoto, reflecting the capacity of her paintings to evoke experiences beyond their Australian setting.

Her practice has been featured in Vogue, The Design Files, and other publications, and was included in A Painted Landscape, published by Thames & Hudson. Through these publications and her exhibition history, Henry’s work has reached an international audience while retaining its close relationship with the landscape surrounding her studio.