Henriette Busch

I am a contemporary landscape painter living and working in England. My paintings are in-between representationalism and abstraction. I am interested in the transition from the recalled reality of a place or a memory to a distorted and enhanced reality which happens during the painting process. I work from sketches, reference photos and from images in my head. My work is also influenced by the many years I spent in West Africa and South America in my youth - the colours, the music, the scents of the flowers, the heat and the sheer exoticness of it all impact my work to this day.
When I am in the landscape the lines, ridges, rivers, hills, fields and flowers really speak to me and I want to absorb their beauty and try to recreate this later in paint. Colour is a very important element in my work as it so well expresses emotion – joy, sadness, nostalgia, exuberance, beauty.
I am drawn to beauty of all kinds – be it the beauty of nature, or the beauty of the human body, or the beauty of shapes, forms and colours and how they all fit together.
When I paint, my intention is to re-create this beauty somehow, in order to capture and evoke that same feeling of how it was, so I often paint spontaneously, while the memory is still fresh. In...

1972-1974 - :Academy of Fine Arts, Paramaribo, Suriname
1999 – 2000: Full time Access Course in Art & Design, University of Hertfordshire
2000 – 2003: BA Fine Art Degree Course, University of Hertfordshire
May 2014: “Form & Abstraction”, St. Ives School of Painting, Cornwall
2015 – to present: Life Drawing classes at The St. Albans Art Society
May 2022 - Freedom in Painting course in Port Isaac, Cornwall with artist Ashley Hanson
September 2024 -1 week Plein Air course in Black Isle, Scottish Highlands led by the painter Eugenie Vronskaya.

Selected Exhibitions & Highlights 2016 – 2020:

January 2020 - Exhibition of 7 of my paintings at a private gallery, "Blickpunkt" in Berlin
January 2020 - Shortlisted for the Royal Society of British Artists Annual Show
March - August 2020 - Online exhibition at St Albans Museum in conjunction with University of Hertfordshire
March 2020 - Monthly Exhibitions at the Wynd Gallery Letchworth
September 2020 - HVA Open Studio (Online)
October 2020 - Q&A Online Interview with FLUX Magazine
December 2020 – March 2021
December 2020 - ING Discerning Eye - Online Exhibition
December 2020 - New Gallery space in Singapore
January - February 2019 - Nude or Fully Clothed Exhibition, Nude Tin Can Gallery, St.Albans
April 2019 - Hertford Open at Courtyard Arts, Hertford
May 2019 - Solo Show of my big abstracts at the Gatehouse Gallery in Harlow
May 2019 - “St. Albans Exposed” Exhibition at the Nude Tin Can Gallery St.Albans
July 2019 - Big Art Fair, Hitchin
September 2019 - OPEN STUDIO
October - December 2019 - Exhibition with the WYND Gallery in Letchworth

September 2018 - OPEN STUDIO My studio in St. Albans
September/October 2018 - “Art Below” Regent’s Park 24/9 for 4 Weeks
October 2018 - Anemoi Art, Brook St, London – Group Sh...