Sarah B. Smith Gallery

Interference: A Retrospective of the Paintings of J.M. Henry

Opening Reception
First Friday, February 6, 5:30-8:00 pm

February 6 - March 1, 2026

McGuffey Art Center celebrates the life and art of the late J.M. Henry.

First City #22, oil & acrylic

Untitled, oil & acrylic

Guest curated by Deborah McLeod, this inclusive survey of Henry’s work, drawn primarily from the artist’s estate with the assistance of Alison Henry and Scott Smith, surveys a lengthy period of its creation and reflects the many experimental approaches of a deeply respected and loved artist, known to many as “Jim.” Jim’s artistic career was blossoming in North Carolina when he was diagnosed in 1995 with a rare, progressive lung disease. In the years that followed, he and his family relocated to Charlottesville to receive care at University of Virginia’s Strickler Transplant Center. Throughout this period, Jim continued to paint and became a resident artist at the McGuffey Art Center, where he was surrounded by a community of artists and friends.

In 2012, Jim received the gift of donor lungs. That remarkable gift provided the art world with canvas upon canvas of works that touched so many. The breath that those donor lungs would exhale through Jim created luminous paintings filled with oxygen, canvases with life expressed in gentle diaphanous color; gossamer layers of pigment that simultaneously contradicted and harmonized with themselves. It was a methodical process and result he often referred to as “interference”.