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CRITICAL REVIEWS

Born into an environment steeped in the arts. Michael Hensley developed a keen interest in painting while in his late teens. At the age of 18, he moved from New Mexico to New York and began his formal training, which included a disciplined study of anatomy. Mankind’s place as an integral force in nature and the struggle of man, is the core of the inspiration with which he approaches his large and passionate paintings.
Art & Antiques-

Michael Hensley’s figure drawings and depiction of human drama, “Ascent” and “Descent”, add a dimension rarely seen outside the world’s great museums.
Art & Antiques-

Michael Hensley’s work is formed with aspiration.
Tally Richards, Art Dealer-

Michael Hensley created a book before he started to paint some of his masterpieces, a book of detailed and exquisite anatomy. Each muscle, each limb of the human body is rendered in the utmost detail and accuracy. Hensley knows how each muscle works, how each looks when still or when in movement. After he finished his book, he moved onto a canvas to create a museum-quality painting of more than one hundred figures, all anatomically correct, all beautifully rendered and all in one massive room size painting. The time Hensley spends on his work is indicative of his philosophy. “Art should be something people strive for, work hard at and dedicate their lives to,” says Michael Hensley, “not something you randomly knock out in half an hour with no thought at all. Create to the best of your ability, and let history take care of the rest.” Artist’s who take pride and time with their art, who put in years of study and personal passion, are unusual in today’s world of “marketable” art. Unlike other artist’s who’s works have no warmth, nothing personal, the paintings of Michael Hensley, shall we say, seem to have a soul.
Taos News-

Hensley’s drawing, The “Voice of Silence” won Best of Show and the People’s Choice award. Hensley’s nude figure studies are impeccably rendered. His work has almost a Germanic draftsmanship quality not unlike Albrecht Durer.
Taos News-

Michael Hensley’s “Genesis” must be seen to be appreciated. It is a simple figure painting, but the musculature, color scheme and size carry a nearly religious power on the shoulders of the powerful man represented.
Taos News-

Paintings, in a sense, are like a symphony orchestra; there can be so much going on, that one can get away with a lot. But a drawing is like a solo voice or instrument: naked; it all hangs out. Only the most ruthless honesty will work. Hensley’s figure drawings are in the great tradition, and it is encouraging that so comparatively young an artist has had the guts and patience to submit himself to a discipline only too often neglected in these hurry-up days.
Art Talk-

Be sure not to miss the massive mural sized canvases of Michael Hensley. This is a spiritual & surrealistic body of work (with great attention to detail of the human form) that is not to be missed!
Taos Today, A Walking Guide-

Where do we come from and where are we going? Michael Hensley commented on this in his colored pencil drawing “Genesis,” which comes from a series created around the same subject. “Everything is cyclical,” the artist said. “Genesis” deals with the emergence of life and creation. All the figures are connected in some way. We all depend on each other for survival. The great thinkers are contemplating what is truly important in life amidst the chaos around them. All that truly matters in this world is kindness and how we treat others.” “Genesis” is grounded in a mass of large heads, some with eyes closed to represent the great thinkers of past ages: Tolstoy, Lao Tzu, Leonardo Da Vinci, Ludwig Van Beethoven, and others. These heads are connected by elongated nude figures weaving in and out of each other. He said “everything is done with exaggeration, physical strength is used to represent intellectual strength.” Nothing lasts, not even this show, so stop by the museum and see it before it’s over. It’s wonderful to have such strong work featured in Taos.
Taos News–
Taos Art Museum–

After graduating from high school, Michael spent the summer in Woodstock, New York, studying with Vladimir Bachinsky, considered one of the great artist and muralist of the century. Because of Bachinsky’s inspiration and enthusiasm for art, Michael acquired a genuine passion for the masters of the past as well as the importance of great draftsmanship.

Michael was particularly inspired by the masters of the High Renaissance. With Vladimir’s recommendation, Michael left home at the age of 18 to attend the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design in New York City. Because he showed so much promise as a Draftsman, Michael was granted a full scholarship at the request of his instructor Gustav Rehberger. Passionately interested in the human figure, Michael was constantly drawing from life. When unable to draw from live models, he spent all his free time studying canons of proportion and human anatomy. These masterful drawings done in his late teens show all the struggle and determination of a young artisan learning to master his craft. The comprehensive collection of Michael’s youthful figure studies is considered by many to be a masterpiece in its own right and as a result those studies have been compiled into book format and are awaiting publication. Michael began exhibiting his work with the Park Slope Art Association, Salmagundi Club, the Brooklyn Conservatory and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. After only one year, his instructor, Rehberger, told him that “he had learned his lessons well and continuing with a formal education would only hamper his individuality and growth as an artist” and “it was time to follow his own path”.

This time coincided with the period in which his mother’s health had rapidly declined. While raising his son Havean, Michael’s interest in philosophy and classical literature began to make its way on to the canvas. Working on mural size canvases, Michael began his pictorial Tour de Force the “Ascent” and “Descent”. Using his knowledge of anatomy, Michael set out to fill these masterpieces with human figures in every conceivable position. The finished paintings were a culmination of several years work.

During this time, Michael had also begun two other large emotionally charged paintings. One a crucifixion entitled “Sangre de Cristo,” which was painted as a tribute to his ailing mother and a very personal painting entitled “Prometheus Bound.”

After his mother’s death, Michael painted “Allegory of Time” a tribute to her memory and one of his most personal and moving paintings. At this time Michael was also creating a new surrealistic body of work. The images emanate from a divine creator both figuratively and metaphorically. Intermingled human forms bursting with nervous tension and energy are harmoniously interlocked with the great sages of the past who are seemingly contemplating mankind’s predestined fate. It is here in this broad, humanistic conception that Michael aspires to convey the unrelenting spirit of mankind while still enjoying to work from live models. It is this theme that currently permeates his thoughts. The Taos news wrote, “Michael created a book before he started to paint some of his masterpieces - a book of detailed and exquisite anatomy. Each muscle, each limb of the human body is rendered in the utmost detail and accuracy. Hensley knows how each muscle works, how each looks when still or when in movement. After he finished his book, he moved onto a canvas to create a museum-quality painting of more than one hundred figures, all anatomically correct, all beautifully rendered and all in one massive room sized painting.”

No doubt Hensley has given and will continue to give his own special gift of timeless beauty and awareness to all of humanity through his exquisite work. Michael summarized it well when he said “You do what you can, and history will take care of the rest.”
Portales News- Tribune-
Associated Press-

Stop and look at Michael Hensley’s meticulously drawn series of “Knowledge Seekers of the World” based on history’s most contemplative and philosophical figures. In his pencil drawings and watercolors with pastel, he depicts more than what Plato and Aristotle might have looked like in their day-you can feel the inner spirit of a wisdom seeker.
Taos Today, A Walking Guide-

Michael Hensley is a kind and modest artist of great skill who would rather engage you in conversation about his children and yours than to talk about his artwork. For all his own personal modesty, it is a near impossibility to walk into a room where his art is hanging without having it dominate your attention. Not just because some of the work is 16 foot tall, monumentally framed oil on canvas, but because it calls forth with immediacy an intimate reflection on human nature, myth, creation and metamorphosis – the symbols, the mystery and the core of human existence and fate.

To view his recent drawings, is to spiral in these subjects, their symbolism and their perfection of form, so eloquently portrayed with, at times, just a wax colored pencil.

Hensley grew up in Taos in the 1960s and 70s, the son of painter Jackson Hensley, in the small but rich world of academic fine art. After high-school he apprenticed with Vladimir Bachinsky, a muralist in Woodstock, New York, where he was surrounded and inspired by the works and writings of the masters – Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dali, Rodin and Bosch – Hensley endlessly practiced drawing the human figure and his drafting skills. He was encouraged to attend the Art Student’s League and the National Academy of Design in New York City. He was driven toward perfection. He excelled in his abilities and interest in anatomical drawing and today the human figure is the central imagery in his creative work. Hensley has authored several books; instructional works teaching students to accurately render human features and anatomy. He has also shared his techniques in demonstrations for the young people at several local schools.

Hensley’s wealth of classical skill, seldom seen mastered today and nearly forgotten in modern times (except in a few institutions of fine art), has mixed in Hensley with a furnace of creative curiosity. The outcome is not trompe l’oeil portraiture, or still life, but animated, energetic forms arching, grasping and leaning into symbols, dreams and one another in a truly inspiring example of the innate human ability to create and at the same time, honor creation.
Caitlin Legere-
Five Magazine, Issue 36-