about gay henderson
Gay Henderson was born in New Zealand in 1953 and moved to Melbourne in the seventies. She developed a very good reputation during the eighties in Melbourne for her figurative sculpture and was solely represented by the exclusive “Georges of Melbourne” branch of David Jones. Gay’s career took a temporary back seat for some years whilst she raised her three daughters, during which time she moved to Adelaide, where she has lived for the past 16 years.
The move to Adelaide also brought about a change in Gay’s art, and the discovery of her passion for figurative and portrait art. Whilst she has studied at the Adelaide Central School of Art, she is an intuitive artist who is essentially self-taught.
Many of Gay’s portraiture pieces have products of commission. She is a member of the South Australian Royal Society of Artists, where she has had the opportunity to exhibit and sell some of her works.
In a recent SALA Festival Gay was featured in the Adelaide Advertiser in relation to her portrait sculpture of Sasha Carruozzo – our Premier’s “first lady”. Soon afterwards she was featured in a local magazine, Adelaide Matters. Some other sculptural subjects include Commissioner Ted Mullighan, footballer Che Cockatoo-Collins and Hon Patrick Conlon MP’s infant daughter Sadie.
Her creativity has been expressed over the years in multiple forms, painting, sketching, figurines, sculpture and more, but her true passion is in portrait and figurative art. Through this medium she not only emulates the image of her subject, but honours their life, personality and character.
Gay has always been fascinated by the human form and in particular with a subject’s face and characteristics. She believes the face is the most expressive part of a person – “it is the way we relate to one another”.
“I have a profound appreciation for all art and admire and respect the personal investment every artist makes in the process of creating each piece. I myself am a thrall to beauty; I create to please my eye and can only hope that others may share my view of what is beautiful.”