Ryan Henry Ward, who signs his work simply as Henry, is an American artist who has been described as "Seattle's most prolific muralist". Publicly active as an artist only since 2008, by September 2011 he had painted over 120 murals in that city and, by his own count, sold over 2000 canvases.[1]
Born in Montana, Ward grew up mainly in Enumclaw, Washington and attended Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University, where he constructed a degree program that mixed writing, art, and storytelling for children. After college, he remained in Bellingham, Washington as a social worker, increasingly working with art therapy. After his older brother and roommate Brandon died 9 September 1999 of heart failure at the age of 25, Ward and his younger brother Andy traveled in India, Nepal, and Thailand.[1]
By 2005, Ward was "burned out" on social work. He and Andy spent two very economically successful years as landscapers. In early 2007, however, Ward had an ATV accident in Moses Lake, Washington, which did damage to his spine from which he still has not fully recovered as of 2011. Following that accident, psychological effects of self-medication with pain-killers led to a suicide attempt in October 2008, followed by a brief period of institutionalization. Shortly after that, he decided to paint full time.[1]
As of 2011, Ward maintains a studio in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood, and lives in a small bus.[1] In contrast to many other artists in Seattle's "street artist" scene, Ward always executes his public pieces with the permission of the property owner.[1]
Ward's work has not received a generally favorable reception from Seattle's art critics. Jonathan Walczak characterizes Ward's work as "whimsical", but sums up the critic's verdict on Ward's work as "gooey, meaningless, and annoyingly prevalent."[1] Former Seattle Post-Intelligencer critic Regina Hackett disparaged his "brain-dead cheer".[2] Kevin McKouen, a former gallery owner who represented Ward's work for about a year before his gallery closed, describes it as "lighthearted… but it definitely also has a dark side."[1]