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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Lifestyle
David Smith in Washington

‘I could have died’: how an artist rebuilt his career after a studio fire

Mike Henderson - Love it or Leave it, I Will Love it if You Leave it, 1976
Mike Henderson - Love it or Leave it, I Will Love it if You Leave it, 1976 Photograph: Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

“The difference between a good life and a bad life,” begins a line attributed to psychiatrist Carl Jung, “is how well you walk through the fire.”

Artist Mike Henderson knows the purging, clarifying effects of conflagration. In 1985 a blaze ripped through his home studio, damaging much of his work from the previous two decades. But that moment of destruction was also one of creation.

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