Harvey Milk Terminal 1
Galvanized by an atmosphere of protest and possibility, pioneering artist, filmmaker, and blues musician Mike Henderson left Marshall, Missouri to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, where he received his MFA in 1970. That same year, Henderson began exploring abstraction, which would become the primary visual language of his work.
To create Parallel Portions, Mike Henderson applied vibrant hues of purple and blue in multiple layers, building them up into a luscious impasto and scraping them off with a palette knife to reveal glimpses of color below. Like the syncopated beat of a song, the painting’s contrasting hues, textures, and patterns come together to form a harmonious whole. With its strikingly juxtaposed bands of color, the painting upholds the possibility of living side-by-side in a celebration of our differences.
