Artist Profile Henry Catenacci

Catenacci’s luminescent tonal contrasts elegantly suspend glowing butterflies and flora in a fantastical stillness.

Artist Biography

Henry Catenacci grew up in New Jersey just outside of New York City, and then lived in the city for many years.

Although blind in his left eye since the age of two, Henry has devoted much of his life to reinterpreting what he sees around him through his paintings and drawings. He started at the age of three, just months after losing half his sight, and he has created thousands of drawings and paintings since that time, all laboriously detailed and technically precise in composition.

Over the years, Henry has worked in graphite pencil, charcoal, ink, marker, chalk, pastels, watercolors and, most recently, layered wax pencil and gouache. He now paints in oil using the Flemish Method (the intricate High Renaissance technique of elegant hyperrealism) to create images that are fantastical and hauntingly surreal.

Henry’s artwork has been exhibited in galleries in New York City, New Jersey, San Antonio and Santa Fe. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.