Henry Ward is an painter, writer, and educator living in London.
His work explores the process of painting, operating at the threshold of abstraction and representation, working iteratively over time to discover the shapes, forms and compositions. He maintains three specific sites of practice; his studio, a shed, where he works on paper, and his kitchen table where he periodically makes small objects. These three spaces create an ongoing dialogue between different ways of working and different paces.
He was shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize in 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2025 and long-listed for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2021. He was included in the inaugural “Football Art Prize” in 2022, hosted by Touchstones, Rochdale, and the Wells Contemporary in both 2020 and 2024. In 2025 he was shortlisted for the Wrexham Painting Prize. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions across the UK and internationally. The first substantial publication about his work, “Shed Paintings – Henry Ward”, was published in February 2021, by Hato Press, and features 101 works on paper and an essay by Ben Street. In 2025 a monograph, entitled “Bethany”, was published by Anomie and focused on the works made whilst in residence at The Albers Foundation, the year following that residency, and paintings and drawings from another residency in the Morvan, France, in the summer of 2024. The book features texts by Fritz Horstman and Jonathan Watkins and transcribed conversations with Jenni Lomax and New York based painter, Amy Sillman.
He has been engaged in art education for the past three decades and is the Director for Freelands Foundation (www.freelandsfoundation.co.uk), launching the Freelands Painting Prize in 2020. He was Head of Education at Southbank Centre and worked in a variety of roles at Welling School, a Specialist Visual Arts College, where he led on the school’s specialism. In 2002 he established the alTURNERtive Prize, an annual award celebrating outstanding student practice. In 2011 he founded the biannual arts and education periodical, æ. He is a visiting lecturer at UK art schools and has taught at Anglia Ruskin University, Bath Spa University, University of Brighton, Manchester School of Art, Plymouth College of Art, Wolverhampton School of Art, Liverpool John Moores and Falmouth University. He is a mentor on the Turps Art School Correspondence and off-site courses.
He has written and lectured widely on the arts and education, with a particular focus on teaching as an artistic practice, the subject of his PhD. He was an advisor for Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin from 2018-21 and curated a two day event, “Assembly”, investigating approaches to public engagement in 2018 and a follow up, “Assembly II”, in 2021.
In 2023 he undertook a residency at The Albers Foundation, Connecticut.