There is an enduring inquisitiveness to Stew Henderson’s practice.  Over several decades, he has drawn upon practices ranging from painting and printmaking to collage, assemblage, and sculpture.  “I need to experiment,” he reflects.

In this series, which he calls Functional Disparities, Henderson returns to a leitmotif throughout his career: the pursuit of paradox and ambiguity.  “When presented with disparate images we automatically form similarities in search of order and understanding,” he explains.  “Because of our unique knowledge, we each form a different understanding or meaning.”

The works in Functional Disparities offer proof of concept, creating visual dialogues that are at once concise and specific, yet steadfastly multivalent, capable of generating numerous configurations.  These dialogues often begin with deceptively simple visual parallels, such as a repeating arcs or angles.  On closer inspection, however, the subjects of these forms can be radically different. 

Henderson takes special pleasure in juxtaposing natural forms and cultural forms, especially within religious practices.  In isolation, these visual echoes might seem ‘merely’ formal, but taken together they generate deep questions about what we deem natural, evolved, or adapted features and behaviors.

Henderson makes no value judgments as he collages together an eclectic range of human and non-human forms.  Instead, he invites us to question how we impose value systems on our world, and why we are so reluctant to admit their arbitrary nature.