Henry Ward answers from his home in London. He is measured, thoughtful, precise without being distant. He strikes me as the kind of person who has spent a long time learning how to look at things carefully, including himself. On his website, his practice is divided into three: studio, shed, kitchen table. It's an unusual way to describe a life's work, and a good place to start.

I ask my first question.

You maintain three distinct sites of practice, a studio, a shed, and a kitchen table, each with its own pace and way of working. How do you know which space a particular idea belongs in, and do works ever migrate between them?

I think that my reason for making in each space is more dictated by routine and circumstance than a particular motivation to make a particular kind of work. With the studio I would, ideally, go every day and I do make a range of different work there, and have many works in progress at any given time. But I can’t get there every day and so the shed became a space out of necessity. I do usually do some painting in the shed most days, even if only for half an hour, or even shorter snatched moments. The context of the space dictates the sort of work and approach made. The kitchen table is less about this, I just happen to have made most (but not all) of my objects sitting at it, but I do make the same kind of objects elsewhere too on occasions…including in the studio.

Crucible, 2025
175x125cm