INSPIRED BY A CHANGING CITY
Showcasing Edmonton’s transition
Past and present collide in an upcoming acrylic exhibition by emerging artist Mark Henderson.
From vanished landmarks to gleaming new skyscrapers, Henderson’s large works — combining photography, painting and collage — explore destruction, death and rebirth in Edmonton’s changing downtown core.
As a kid growing up in the city’s Beverly community, Henderson (who goes by “Hende”) loved drawing and doodling. He thought he might become an architect. Since his father spent most of his career in real estate, they used to joke that they would form a team, with Henderson designing the buildings his father could sell. That dream didn’t pan out. Instead, Henderson spent 34 years working at an oil refinery.
As retirement neared a few years ago, he returned to his love of art, signing up for printmaking classes with the Society of Northern Alberta Print-artists and then night classes toward a certificate in fine arts from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension.
His graduation show, “Recollections of Architecture and Other Scenes in an Urban Space,” opens at the University of Alberta’s Extension Gallery (10230 Jasper Ave.) on Sept. 11 and runs until Sept. 27.
Henderson painted most of the pieces on the reverse side of Lexan, a transparent type of plastic. Then he mounted the paintings on aluminum. A few of the pieces were painted directly on aluminum.
Existing landmarks — such as Telus House and the Shaw Conference Centre — appear in the collection, as do now-demolished buildings and pieces of modern technology.
(Don Iveson’s Instagram account makes an appearance in one collage.)
“Growing up in the city, I’ve seen a lot of structures come and go,” said Henderson, who is 58.
“That’s where the theme of this body of work is coming from — the memory of some of these structures and the life and death of some of these.”
One winter day, while he was driving home through the Boyle Street neighbourhood, he spotted the old Gold Nugget Suites building lit up by a bright light on the opposite side of the street. The image captivated him, but he neglected to take photographs.
He drove by again, but the building had been demolished.
He took photos of the demolition site, which, with its scraped basement walls, “looked like a grave,” and used a collage of those photos as the background for a painting of the new Hyatt Place hotel looming over the old suites.
During another trip downtown, Henderson searched for a different building that had inspired him, but the search was unsuccessful. He named that finished painting “Faded Memory.”
In another piece, he used flow medium (a liquid added to acrylic paint to increase spreadability) to depict a fire raging around the shell of the old Leamington Mansions, which burned down in the fall of 2015.
Henderson’s paintings show a city during moments of transition and crisis, at times a dystopian place. In “There Is No Escape,” the sky is falling and a barbed wire fence stretches across the painting. In another, pedestrians are glued to their phones, oblivious to their surroundings.
The works also play with the themes of nostalgia, rejuvenation and progress.
An opening reception for “Recollections of Architecture and Other Scenes in an Urban Space” will be held at the gallery (10230 Jasper Ave.) on Sept. 12 at 6 p.m.