Belynda Henry is in a select group of Australian landscape painters to achieve international success, only recently returning from opening her solo exhibition in Los Angeles (which is currently running). Her previous U.S. show in New York City was a sell out, with style arbiter and collector Christian Louboutin acquiring more than half of the works. “Magnificent landscapes, and the reflections on the water are oh so vibrant – sublime colours,” Louboutin related.

Henry first entered the ranks of leading and celebrated landscape painters in this country in 2000, after being a noted finalist in the Wynne Prize. The then- director of the Art Gallery of NSW, Edmund Capon, pointed out her work to Stuart Purves, director of the prestigious Australian Galleries. Purves noted that she brought “simplicity in her work . . . within a complicated world”, and was quick to pull her into his artist stable. She is now a multiple finalist of both the Wynne and Archibald prizes, amongst other prestigious awards, and her work has been exhibited alongside some of Australia’s most prominent and influential Australian artists including Fred Williams, Arthur Boyd, Jeffrey Smart, Lloyd Rees, Brett Whiteley, John Kelly, William Robinson, Garry Shead, John Wolseley, Inge King, George Baldessin, and John Coburn. She has held more than 30 solo shows over a prolific career.

Henry lives and works deep within a long lush valley along the wild escarpments north of Sydney. Here she is embedded in the landscape and exposed to its ways, witnessing the transitions of ever-changing light, texture and soundscape. All of this she absorbs into her compositions, which are of nature and the infinite fascination of the land. Henry’s works bring forth the internal meditative quality evoked by landscape, illuminating these impressions in wondrous, imaginative works. 2024 brings the addition of a second work space, Belynda Henry Studio in Sydney.

Her work has been regularly featured by media coverage, including Vogue magazine, and she was considered one of the “seven artists you should invest in now” by The Age. Henry’s work has been acquired by private collections in the United States, Japan, Switzerland, Taiwan, New Zealand, Ireland, Hong Kong, Athens, Paris and London. Two years ago, her work appeared in the acclaimed Thames & Hudson tome on Australian art, A Painted Landscape.

Amongst those who have praised Henry’s work, is fashion icon Akira Isogawa, with the designer describing her painting as “a pure form of metaphysical landscape which almost crossed over Japanese calligraphy”. Henry’s work “somehow triggered my childhood memory of gardens in Kyoto”, Isogawa wrote.

Henry’s New York gallerist, Tim Olsen, said “her sell-out exhibition in New York with us, was a testament to her talent”. Quoted in a newspaper report on Henry’s international rise, Olsen said her work “seduces the eye”. “People who had never seen Australia felt enamoured by the ethereal qualities of her work,” he said. “International collectors felt an intimacy and visual experience that extended beyond any axioms of a provincial experience.

Her work is universal. Belynda Henry is a rare artist. Her interaction with landscape has a profound aesthetic and construct. She marries her incredible sensibility for the colours of her surrounding bushland with an underlying abstract structure,” Olsen said.

Her recent creations reference the deep structure, shifting shapes and pure colours of the landscape through a meditative state rather than a literal one. Often after experiencing the landscape during daylight she returns to her studio with sketches, notes and a mind-space of imagery, allowing the works to form themselves by night. She sequesters herself for intense periods to bring together her rich body of fieldwork. She says of this process that she must let the works “imagine themselves, like a dream sequence”.

Henry takes us to the precipice of total abstraction, yet masterfully holds the viewer with spare pieces of evidence caught within the work, keeping a footing in traditional genre and rendering her painting hypnotically relatable.

Most recently Belynda Henry has exhibited her third solo show in America, with exclusive representation across the US with Findlay Galleries International.