Mike Henderson

Mike Henderson was born in 1943 in Marshall, Missouri. Initially a high school dropout, Henderson ran a shoeshine stand and in his downtime learned to play guitar and paint watercolors. Henderson began selling his paintings at the stand, attracting the attention of local businessman Leonard Van Dyke who bought him a ticket to a Van Gogh exhibition at what is now the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. This would be the first museum exhibition that Henderson attended and an important moment in his artistic journey. With the new goal of attending art school, Henderson returned to high school and graduated in 1965. He then moved to California after enrolling in the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), one of the only nonsegregated art schools at the time.

San Francisco was a place of major growth for Henderson. His early work at SFAI largely consisted of figurative paintings that evolved into work that addressed the social and political climate of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Not only was he painting, but he also began making films and creating his own soundtracks. In 1968 he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, a prestigious artist residency, and had a painting featured in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. He would show his work again at the Whitney three years later in the 1971 exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America.

After finishing his BFA in 1969 and MFA in 1970 at SFAI, Henderson went on to teach at the University of California, Davis, for forty-three years. After his time at SFAI, Henderson’s paintings began to shift from figurative works into lyrical abstractions that explore the push and pull of color in compositions built from dense pigment. Henderson likens abstraction to improvisation in music, relying on instinct and intuition to guide his process. At first, his abstractions were met with criticism for not having “black enough” subject matter but he continued to challenge expectations and build a unique visual language commenting on Black identity and politics throughout his prolific career.

Henderson was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 for his work in film and was the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1978 and 1989. In 1974, Henderson was featured in the invitational exhibition West Coast 74: The Black Image at the Crocker Art Museum alongside Charles White, Betye Saar, and others. At Davis, Henderson befriended William T. Wiley and Terry Allen, forming a music group called the Creatures of Snot. In addition to painting, he continues to play music and has recorded three solo albums, Homesick Oakland Blues (1998), Only Time Will Tell (2001), and Trouble Ain’t No Stranger (2008).

_Notes:

_{Alta Journal. “Alta Live: Artist Mike Henderson.” Posted February 15, 2023, by Alta Journal. YouTube, 49:27. https://youtu.be/uy7YtqftWAM?si=o_AFzE4gZITX8VGk}

_{Crowder, Marcus, “Mike Henderson’s Personal Renaissance.” Alta Journal, December 21, 2022. 
https://www.altaonline.com/culture/art/a42071884/mike-henderson-painter-marcus-crowder/}

_{Henderson, Mike, “It Doesn’t Come Overnight: Mike Henderson and Qianjin Montoya in Conversation.” Interview by Qianjin Montoya. Open Space, SFMoMa, May 4, 2020. 
https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2020/05/it-doesnt-come-overnight-mike-henderson-and-qianjin-montoya-in-conversation/}

_{Square Cylinder. “Mike Henderson @ SFAI + Haines.” Accessed September 19,2025. https://www.squarecylinder.com/2019/10/mike-henderson-sfai-haines/}