Henry Ward is an artist, writer, and educator whose practice is deeply engaged with the act of making, materiality, and the interplay between abstraction and representation. Living and working in London, Ward’s work spans painting, drawing, and small-scale sculpture, embodying a dynamic approach that challenges and redefines traditional painterly structures. His practice unfolds across three distinct spaces—his kitchen table, garden shed, and studio—each playing a crucial role in an ongoing dialogue of creation, intuition, and refinement.
At the core of Ward’s work is an exploration of structure within painting. His compositions are constructed through a process of layering and juxtaposition, where geometric forms, graphic mark-making, and fluid, gestural strokes coexist in a precarious balance. Colour plays a defining role in his paintings, with bold hues and unexpected harmonies that heighten the tension between order and disorder. His approach to surface and structure evokes the sculptural quality of Philip Guston’s late works, where shape and pigment interact in a state of constant negotiation.
Ward’s small sculptural works, known as the Kitchen Table Sculptures, offer another dimension to his practice. Created from found materials gathered during city walks, these objects exist at the intersection of the real and the abstract, bridging the gap between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional. These forms, characterised by their assemblage-like quality, reflect his ongoing interest in balance, wedging, and the interplay of contrasting materials. They serve as an extension of his paintings, reinforcing the physical and conceptual connections between his works across different mediums.
His Shed Paintings—a series of works on paper created in his garden shed—are marked by their immediacy and intuitive execution. Rapidly produced, often overpainted, these works capture the raw, unfiltered energy of Ward’s process, where representation is secondary to the act of painting itself. The shed serves as a space of material exploration, a place where the life of paint is paramount, and forms emerge through an instinctive, gestural engagement with the medium. These works often act as components for larger compositions in the studio, where Ward reconfigures and integrates them into expansive multi-piece paintings, embodying a puzzle-like approach to form and colour.
The studio, in contrast, provides a space for contemplation and sustained engagement with the painted surface. While Ward’s practice remains rooted in spontaneity, his studio works develop over extended periods, allowing for a deeper interrogation of pictorial structure. The layering of architectural and figural elements over abstract planes destabilises conventional composition, introducing a sense of movement and evolution within the work.
Ward’s contribution to contemporary painting has been widely recognised, with his work included in major exhibitions such as The Football Art Prize (2022), The Aesthetics of Enchantment in Abstract Art (2022), and Lost in Abstraction (2021). He has been shortlisted multiple times for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize and was longlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2021. His first major publication, Shed Paintings – Henry Ward (Hato Press, 2021), presented a collection of 101 works on paper with an essay by Ben Street. In 2025, a monograph titled Bethany, published by Anomie, will explore Ward’s residency at The Albers Foundation and his evolving practice, with contributions from Fritz Horstman, Jonathan Watkins, and others.
In addition to his artistic practice, Ward has played a pivotal role in arts education and curation. As the Director of the Freelands Foundation, he has championed initiatives that support contemporary painters, including launching the Freelands Painting Prize in 2020. His curatorial and educational projects, such as Assembly (2018, 2021) at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, have examined new approaches to public engagement with art.
Henry Ward’s work is, at its essence, an ongoing investigation into the possibilities of paint and form. His layered, architectonic compositions and sculptural sensibilities reveal a process-driven exploration of materiality and balance. As Rosa JH Berland notes, Ward’s approach is rooted in “a wrapping of materials, juxtaposed with a balancing and ‘wedging’ of form, shape, texture, and colour.” It is through this alchemical process that Ward’s art achieves its singular energy, continuously unfolding in the act of making itself.
