Ahead of S|2 London's exhibition of Ewen Henderson's contemporary sculpture, we asked longtime collector and personal friend, Anthony Shaw, to give us some insight into the artist himself.
O ften a bull in a china shop, defiantly critical of the contemporary and uninterested in being at all fashionable, underneath it all he was as soft as his watercolours.
He started as a painter and it was always all important and an overwhelming influence in the way he constructed his work in clay. Another part of his defiance was pushing himself and his materials to the limit. Making and breaking his own rules.
He was a master of form, colour and his own unique patina, and expressing the nature of emotion and feelings.
I met him when all his work was forms of vessel, echoing early Mediterranean pottery;
made contemporary and very much his own. This is work that needs time, to be with and learn about what it has to say from within. Its impression masks a multitude of ideas.
He was very interested in standing stones and visited most of the major sites, drawing and painting them. In the early 1990s he started making tall upright forms which became Megaliths. They have all the power and majesty of the ancient stones.
He knew that questions were far more important than answers. Beginnings always lead somewhere, like perfection endings lead nowhere.
He changed my life and made me demand so much more from art and artists.
