About the Speaker
David Henderson spent his early years on his family’s sheep property in Western Queensland, moving to Brisbane to complete his secondary school studies. As a child he was a member of ABC Radio’s Argonauts club, and as such can claim Jeffrey Smart as his first art teacher, (albeit at a great distance).
After leaving school David studied architecture briefly at QIT (QUT) before finding work as a freelance house portraitist in Brisbane. This enabled him to travel throughout Europe, spending six months in Italy. He then lived for four years in London where he was a student at the the Royal Academy Schools, graduating in 1985, and where he was awarded the S J Solomon Prize for a head and a figure painting.
David has taught the theory and practice of art at the Brisbane Institute of art, the Arts Academy, and the the Queensland Art Gallery and lectured part-time for a number of years in the history of art and design at QUT.
David’s first solo exhibition was at the Victor Mace Gallery in Milton in 1986 and since then he has held over 30 exhibitions, mostly in Brisbane but also in Sydney, Melbourne, London and Rome.
David has participated in a number of group exhibitions; he has been selected on three occasions for the Royal Academy Summer exhibition in London, was a finalist in the inaugural Doug Moran Portrait Prize and has twice been awarded Best of Show at the Brisbane Rotary Art Spectacular.
Since 1995, David has accompanied over 50 tours for the Melbourne-based travel company ASA (Australians Studying Abroad) as a tour leader and lecturer, mostly in Italy but also in France, America and the UK.
Until recently, David divided his year between Australia and Italy, where he spent most of his time preparing work for exhibitions and working on commissions. His subjects include landscape, urban landscape, still life, portraiture and the figure
