ABOUT THE ARTIST
BRUCE HENDERSON
Bruce Henderson was born in the small town of Inverness, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in 1948. Despite not having any access to the arts, he spent a lot of his spare time drawing. His subject matter would range anywhere from his own hands to objects around the house, but he had never tried his hand at painting until one Christmas when he received a small set of oil paints and went about teaching himself how to paint.
Bruce really came to love the act of painting and decided to enroll in a few summer art camps during high school. After graduating, he attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where he received some formal art training.
In 1976, Bruce and his wife, Barb, moved to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia and started a family. Bruce returned to the workforce to support their now three children but did not give up his art and painted whenever he could.
After working with oils for many years, he decided to try his hand at acrylics and really liked their quick-to-dry quality. Inspired by artists such as Alex Colville and Tom Forrestall, he even spent some time working with egg tempera but found this medium far too labor intensive.
It was in doing watercolour sketches as preliminary studies for his paintings that Bruce discovered that he liked the spontaneity and freedom they offered. He spent the next ten years concentrating purely on experimenting with them and created a large body of work. His subject matter consisted primarily of the Nova Scotian landscapes and its small fishing communities.
In 2005, when his daughter, Jenny, returned home from her first year at NSCAD University, she was working mostly in oils which inspired Bruce to return, once again, to the medium.
Since then he has been painting almost exclusively in oil paints and has been mastering his technique and signature realist style.
His preferred subject matter continues to be the Canadian landscapes and seascapes that surround him as well as the still lifes he composes in his home studio.
Bruce and Barb continue to live in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.
