Originally from Islandmagee in Co. Antrim, Henshaw practised in Belfast at Queen Street Studios artists collective for just under a decade before moving to Fermanagh where she has been based for 17 years. Over the past two decades, Henshaw has exhibited throughout the world in locations in Europe, North America, Asia and Indonesia. She has held numerous international artist residencies in Antwerp, New York, Kerala, New Dehli and Orissa, South India, and has been artist-in-residence in Ireland at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Monaghan, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo, and The Model in Sligo.
In 1821 Constable began to make studies of clouds in an attempt to capture their transient energy. The motivation was explained by Constable when he wrote to his friend Dr. Fisher. ‘It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale and the chief organ of sentiment.’
Constable was not alone, Titian, Turner among many others looked to the sky to express in the poetic sense a mood and Dutch Masters of the Golden Age often divided the canvas in half to give equal empahsis to nature and man.
Clouds by Diane Henshaw follow in the wake of this historical precedent. Her work forms part of a new study that draws inspiration from the Great Masters as well as Japanese painting techniques.
