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"Henson's work is strangely melancholic, imbued with a poetic lyricism and darkly glowing palette. He embraces the somnambulistic side of reality. Working at night in the no-man's-land of suburbia, the Melbourne-based artist ignores the dictates of time and fashion. His work is, in part, informed by paintings of the old masters and an obsession with the figure and landscape. His images capture a moment of transition; dusk, the nature of adolescence and the loss of innocence.

But there is also a melancholy and longing, a sadness. For Henson, these works are portrayals of memories. "Everyone carries their childhood around inside of them for the rest of their lives," he says. "It's an interior landscape, a lost domain made up of our past experiences, our fears and longings. Any language of portraiture really only becomes interesting when we feel that we are seeing some part of ourselves. And I think in the arts this can come unexpectedly — as though one has suddenly remembered some fundamental thing about oneself — and the shock of it heightens or sense of mortality."

Any subject for Henson invites the possibility of endless speculation. While the subjects are central, it is the response of each viewer that makes Henson's work so powerful. It is the priority of individual experience. "Everything must contribute in some way to our sense of being in the world. Perhaps for some, there is this need to find a physical form, separate from ourselves, through which to articulate these impressions and these reactions. My interest probably stems from the way in which the unknown stimulates speculation," he adds. "We find often, in the most interesting art, that we have an acute sense of something. Something, if you like, that is powerfully apprehended yet not fully understood. All of these things animate our speculative capacity, and that is why it is interesting." — Ashley Crawford