Murray Henderson was working in his cramped studio in 2014 when he kicked over two buckets of red and white paint onto one of the canvas paintings lining the floor.
“Oh, well,” Henderson thought, assuming he would need to scrap the soiled project, a portrait of Montreal Canadiens Hall of Fame left winger Bob Gainey.
Three weeks later, Henderson and his wife, Heather, hosted a party at their home in Peterborough, Ontario. Henderson, who often leaves paintings lying around the house, had left out the stained canvas of Gainey.
One of Henderson’s friends, Al Lopes, took notice.
“Now that’s art,” Lopes said, pointing at the mistakenly Jackson Pollock-infused painting.
“I'm looking at him thinking, I splattered paint on it by mistake, and that's what makes it art?” Henderson said. “And so from there, I said to my wife, ‘You know, I'm going to try doing a couple abstract pieces and see how it goes.’”
And with that mishap in his 10-foot by 20-foot studio, Henderson stumbled into his signature style.
Now, more than a decade later, Henderson, 56, is carving his own path as a pioneer in what he calls “exact abstract.”
And he has even taken it a step further, incorporating game-used memorabilia into some of his art.
One of his greatest creations is an 87-inch x 59-inch painting of Wayne Gretzky, featuring a signed game-used stick from the Great One's second career hat trick during his 1979-80 rookie season.
Many people who see his art tell Henderson they’ve never seen anything like it, which he says is the ultimate compliment as an artist.
He has created pieces for celebrities such as DJ Khaled, Michael Rubin and Desiree Perez.
In December, he hosted two booths at Art Basel Miami Beach.
“Murray Henderson is an incredibly talented artist,” said Rubin, CEO of Fanatics. “I’m fortunate to have one of his custom pieces hanging in our New York City office that brings to life both sports icons and Fanatics in a way only he can with his unique style that fuses art and sports' biggest moments and athletes.”
But Henderson’s rise to this stage is one very few would have anticipated, including the artist himself. Like his art, which is littered with hidden details, Henderson’s story is anything but a clear picture.
Throughout his career, Henderson always has labored to please everyone around him, whether it be customers or even children gawking at his portraits of Michael Jordan or LeBron James.
His art has never been about him. It’s perhaps his greatest trait, but also his greatest detriment, because others used that to their advantage.
After a promising early career, a flurry of traumatic experiences in both his personal and professional life soured his view on art so much, he nearly quit painting entirely.
Prodigy with a pencil
Henderson’s mother Barb calls his “exact abstract” art his “shit art.”
“When I said that the first time, he looked at me and I said, ‘Well, you know, I don't like that,’” Barb said, referring to the splashed canvases. “But other people love it.”
Barb preferred her son’s realism, whether it be wildlife, music or sports, though he constantly jabs back at her that his art is more than “copying a picture.”
Henderson has always been a natural artist, taking after Barb. From the time he was 2 years old, he was drawing pictures of motorcycles — his speciality, though he isn’t sure why.
“That's how we could keep him quiet when we'd be at a restaurant,” Barb said. “We’d just give him paper and (a) pencil and he would draw the whole time and never, ever say a peep.”
Over time, motorcycles evolved into anything Henderson’s young brain could envision.
One particular night in 1986, when Henderson was a senior in high school, Barb looked over Henderson’s shoulder, puzzled at what her son was drawing. He had a giant canvas, and yet, was starting in the very center.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’ Because to me, why would you start something in the center?” Barb said. “And he said, ‘Can't you see what that is?’ And I looked at it, and I looked at it, and I said, ‘No, I can't.’ He said, ‘It's a nose.’”
By the morning the nose was completed, but the rest of the drawing took three months to complete.
The work was, in fact, a portrait of John Lennon that Henderson drew for a school project.
His teacher was so impressed, he introduced Henderson to a printer to make copies to sell to other teachers. Eventually, hundreds of his prints were made and distributed across the globe.
“I didn’t even know what a print was,” Henderson said. “(But) that's when I kind of realized you can actually make money selling art.”
For the young Canadian, hockey soon became his specialty.
In 1985, when the Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup, Henderson and his father, Gerry, had access to the Oilers’ locker room because Gerry, a wine and spirits distributor, supplied the alcohol for the Stanley Cup champion.
So, when Edmonton defeated Philadelphia in Game 5 of the 1985 Stanley Cup, Henderson and his dad celebrated with the team.
“I drank out of the Cup with the Oilers,” Henderson said. “You walk around like you're part of the team. It was pretty special.”
But while Henderson remembers drinking out of Lord Stanley and celebrating with Gretzky, Mark Messier and Paul Coffey, Gerry remembers his son drawing the scene. Gerry took photographs of the celebration, which Henderson then sketched, and the final work was presented to the Oilers.
Hockey art soon became the bulk of Henderson’s work, with most pieces being auctioned off for charity.
The most notable of these was a painting called “Tough Guys” dedicated to raising money for Hockey Fights Cancer after U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer Paul Stewart was diagnosed with the disease.
The painting, from 2000, features Stewart, who after his playing career served as a longtime NHL official, surrounded by the league’s top enforcers throughout its history.
“(It) kind of put me on the map with the NHL,” said Henderson, who has since done pieces for numerous charities of former pro players.
Henderson managed to have 11 of the 13 players listed sign the painting (the only two outstanding had already died).
“The piece was well done,” said Stewart, 71. “And it seemed like it would be something that would raise a lot of money.”
Henderson doesn’t know exactly how much money that painting in particular raised for Hockey Fights Cancer, nor does he know exactly how much he has raised for different charities over his career. But he estimates total donations topped $3 million.
“That's what makes me proud,” Henderson said, “is charities and the people that I've helped.”
Icy roads ahead
The knock on Henderson’s car was a welcome one, but he couldn’t open the door.
As the snow fell on a bright December afternoon, the fire department hustled to pry Henderson from the vehicle through the passenger side.
Moments later, Henderson was placed onto a stretcher and loaded into the back of an ambulance alongside a young woman, just old enough to drive.
Living in Canada his entire life, driving in snow was nothing new for Henderson.
But for young drivers, it can be anything but.
Minutes before, the woman had bounced into the shoulder of the road, and was sent skidding across into oncoming traffic, where she collided head-on with Henderson.
Henderson and the young woman chatted a bit in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. He was mad, but much more at the circumstances than at her.
“I've been in that situation where, where you don't, you don't have control,” Henderson said. People that have never driven it will never understand.”
Though Henderson didn’t suffer any fractures, he did endure severe whiplash, with symptoms such as migraines, neck pain, dizziness and nausea.
When he first returned home from the hospital, he couldn’t even raise his head, yet he constantly feared he was falling behind on projects.
Frankly though, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to paint again. Right then, his primary goal was being able to live a normal life.
The recovery was intense. Henderson spent the first week after the crash bedridden, loaded with pain medication. After he could finally get to his feet, he faced months of physical therapy.
In the middle of his recovery, disaster struck in the form of five words:
“Do you know Mario Lemiuex?”
Tragedy strikes
When Henderson first met his youngest stepdaughter, Courtney, she was only 6 years old, but courageous beyond her years.
“She came up to me, and she goes, ‘So I hear, you're an artist, can you draw me?’” Henderson said. “She put me on the spot. So, I literally had to sit there and draw this little girl from scratch. You know, I was nervous to meet her. ... She could just speak to anybody. She was so brave.”
Henderson was Courtney’s stepfather, but she always called him “dad," which brings a smile to his face. And she was always proud of her stepfather, the artist.
When Courtney’s school needed a new mural, she said, “Oh, my dad can do that,” Henderson said.
In 2008, when Courtney was just 15, she told her doctor about persistent fatigue, but he brushed it aside and chalked it up to being a growing teenager.
It wasn’t until Heather and Henderson told the doctor of Courtney’s difficulty breathing, especially during P.E. classes, that a CT scan was ordered.
Later that night, Courtney and her boyfriend were in the kitchen baking when Heather received a call from the doctor.
“‘Pack your bags,’” Henderson remembered the doctor instructing Courtney and Heather, “‘We’re taking you by ambulance to SickKids (The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto).’”
“Our lives changed in one phone call,” Henderson said. “Do you know Mario Lemieux?”
Lemieux, the Pittsburgh Penguins all-time leading scorer, was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 1993, at the age of 27, shocking the hockey world.
While Hodgkin lymphoma is considered very treatable, Courtney’s subtype was not. She was diagnosed with lymphocyte-depleted Hodgkin lymphoma, the rarest sub-type, affecting less than 1% of all Hodgkin patients.
And while Hodgkin lymphoma is one of the most prevalent types of cancers found in teenagers, Lymphocyte-depleted is most commonly found in elderly adults as well as people with pre-existing immune conditions.
The chances of it occurring in a healthy 15-year-old girl weren’t impossible, but exceptionally uncommon.
Month after month, Courtney lay in a hospital room in SickKids.
Because of her condition and treatments, Courtney was kept in isolation. Visitors had to wash their hands up to their elbows, clean out fingernails and put coverings over their shoes so as not to track in any germs.
Anytime Henderson washed Courtney’s laundry, he had to run a wash beforehand to sanitize the machine and then immediately upon finishing washing her actual clothes, he sealed them in a Ziploc bag.
Every night, he made the 90-minute drive from Peterborough to Toronto, where Courtney would be in bed, with Heather by her side.
When Courtney was first diagnosed, around Valentine’s Day in 2008, Henderson couldn’t make the drive. Still suffering the lingering effects from whiplash, he couldn’t turn his head to the right, so received rides from friends and family. But Henderson soon realized that wouldn’t be sustainable and began driving himself.
For 18 grueling months, Courtney battled, undergoing multiple attempts of stem cell transplants. But she couldn’t receive them from anyone else, only from herself.
The cells didn’t take; and eventually, she couldn’t fight anymore.
Courtney died Aug. 7, 2009, two days after Henderson and Heather’s anniversary. They don’t celebrate it anymore.
“She fought it right to the end as hard as she could,” Henderson said. "She wanted to live, no matter what.”
Today, a portrait of Courtney sits in the corner of Henderson's studio, constantly watching over him while he paints.
“It's been 15 years,” Henderson said. “And it doesn't feel like she's gone yet.”
"He literally ripped the art out of me"
Throughout Courtney’s treatment, Henderson made frequent trips to stores on his way to Toronto, just to find anything he could to make her more comfortable.
Sometimes it would be ice cream, other times a small portable fan, as the hospital room could be quite warm.
But one time when he ventured into a Canadian Tire — similar to a Lowe’s or Home Depot — he saw something very unexpected: his art.
“That was definitely a shock,” Henderson said. “What the heck’s going on?”
Six months prior, a man who said he was an art distributor contacted Henderson about becoming business partners. The man and Henderson were connected through a mutual acquaintance who ran an art gallery in Leamington, Ontario, where Henderson regularly featured his art.
The distributor promised he could get Henderson’s art into stores and galleries across Canada and the northern United States.
Now, upon further digging, Henderson discovered his distributor, who Henderson did not want to name out of fear of retribution, was selling his art, designated for charities, to retailers, and keeping 100 percent of the profits.
Henderson’s brother Marty even obtained a warrant to search the distributor’s house. There, in the rafters of the man’s garage, were thousands of Henderson’s paintings he had thought were commissioned by charities to raise money.
“You put your heart and soul into a painting. You really think it's going to do good, and basically, other people are pocketing the money,” Henderson said. “It's just wrong. It's totally wrong.”
Based on fine print in the contract, the distributor said he owned Henderson’s art. And the case became a civil issue, rather than a criminal one.
During a time when Henderson and his family were most vulnerable physically, emotionally and financially, they were struck again.
For the next six years, Henderson worked tirelessly to recover his art. But legal fees added up, as well as the mental toll.
“You know, down deep in your own gut, that you are in the right. You've done a lot of good things,” Henderson said. "But you just get to the point where you just say, ‘Whatever.’ I just said to the lawyer, ‘Do whatever you can.’ I didn't even care anymore.' ... If it's that important to someone to steal and rip off charities and good people, then whatever. That's kind of my thought.”
But not only did he give up on fighting a legal battle, he gave up on art. First, he limited his work to just friends and family, then, he didn’t paint at all.
“It consumed me,” Henderson said. “He literally ripped the art out of me.”
Henderson's work takes off
The hardest thing Paul Kwiatkowski ever had to do was convince Henderson to showcase his art at shows in the U.S.
Kwiatkowski, whose background was in buying and selling sports memorabilia, met Henderson at the Toronto Sports Card Expo in May 2021. Standing at a booth, he noticed Henderson, who Kwiatkowski noted was obviously out of his element at the event. So, Kwiatkowski initiated a conversation with the stranger in line with him trying to sell some old coins.
After some prodding, he learned Henderson’s name and profession, and he just so happened to own 50 Murray Henderson originals.
Initially, Kwiatkowski thought he was purchasing prints because they were only a few hundred dollars.
“There's no way originals could possibly sell for that little,” Kwiatkowski said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
After a full year off from painting following his art being stolen, Henderson returned to painting, but not on a full-time basis. His main income came from his job selling tobacco, but not painting meant losing part of his identity, which Heather noticed, and she wasn't going to allow her husband to lose that.
She pushed him to resume painting, which he did on the side for several years, selling art on his website.
“I always wanted to draw what I saw,” Henderson said. “So, I found that when I wasn't creating, when I wasn't doing that, there was something missing. It sounds weird, but it's like, when you have that, I guess the gift to do it, you always want to do it."
Despite that, he didn’t have much interest entering back into the professional space, as his entire view of the industry had been tainted when his art was stolen.
“When something like that happens,” Kwiatowksi said, “your career doesn't even matter. He lost all his drive to be a successful artist.”
But Kwiatkowski felt there was enormous untapped potential, and he wanted to represent Henderson.
However, the strategy for success meant attending shows in the U.S. And that took relentless convincing, especially since Henderson was afraid of being burned again.
Kwiatkowski toiled for six months persuading Henderson to appear at a single event. Once Henderson finally obliged, the show was another six months out.
“I had to front everything financially, not because he wasn't willing. It was more like he just didn't think it was gonna work,” Kwiatkowski said.
Henderson’s first display came in the spring of 2022 at the One of a Kind Show in Chicago, a full year after meeting Kwiatkowski, and his worst fear came true. There weren’t any takers; and Henderson was ready to quit.
“We were done after one show,” Kwiatkowski said. “He's like, ‘No, I'm booked the rest of the year.' It's just a total lack of confidence. If you have no confidence in what you're doing, it's pretty hard to just showcase it.”
But after three days, one of the show’s attendees bought one of Henderson’s pieces and then commissioned four more, totaling more than $30,000 worth of sales.
Immediately, Henderson’s calendar opened back up. And his trajectory since has been exponential.
After steady commissions and appearances at regional shows for the rest of 2022, Henderson’s work was featured at The National Sports Collectors Convention for the first time in 2023, but on a whim.
Henderson, himself, couldn’t attend, as he had just undergone heart surgery. So Kwiatkowski’s friend let him use a third of his booth, where Kwiatkowski hosted a handful of items. He sold three pieces in the first 15 minutes.
The big break came a few months later at the September Philly Show, where Joe Drelich of The National, saw Henderson’s booth on display.
“We have to make sure that this is a corporate booth for 2024,” Kwiatkowski remembered Drelich saying.
“That doesn’t really happen,” Kwiatkowski said. “There's like, 600 people in line trying to get into The National for the following year.”
From there, the dominoes fell quickly.
By 2024, Henderson’s booth at The National ballooned in size, growing from one-third of a booth to a centerpiece, with a framework that captured as much attention as billion-dollar companies such as Topps and eBay.
One month later, Henderson’s work hooked thousands at Fanatics Fest in New York, including DJ Khaled.
By December, his work was featured at Art Basel in Miami, one of the premier art shows in the world.
“Paul believed in me more than ... anyone,” Henderson said. “My wife, my mom and dad, you know, my family, they always pushed me and said, ‘You should be doing this full-time.’ But Paul really believes, and he's believed since day one.”
A very special request
Gene and Jamie’s bedroom in their Chicago home is eloquent, yet modest.
The large room, adorned with a vaulted hardwood ceiling to match the floor, is perfectly complemented by its muted color scheme, of white, beige and brown.
Two pops of color brighten the Spartan-like bedroom. A pair of cowboy boots is hung on the wall a few feet to the left of a mounted television, and an enormous canvas eclectic in nature.
When Gene and Jamie (the couple asked that their last names not be used) were building their home in Chicago during the COVID-19 pandemic, they spent weekends scouring art shows looking for decorations to fill the house.
Their typical process involved taking a lap or two around a given show and then gathering information for artists who had pieces they liked. If they were lucky, there’d be one or two.
They knew they wanted their masterpiece to be in their bedroom, and they wanted variety in the creation.
After circling the grounds of a show in Chicago, the pair discovered Henderson’s booth, and they certainly liked what they saw. But the piece that captured their intrigue wasn’t on display, in fact it wasn’t a piece at all. It was Henderson’s business card, which featured images of Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, among others.
“I know this is going to sound crazy,” Gene remembered saying to Jamie as they left the show, “I would like to ask him if he would ever consider making something that looks like his business card.”
When they approached Henderson about the idea, they weren’t sure what to expect. They’d gone through previous experiences working with artists, where an end product ultimately never came to fruition.
And art wasn’t the only frustration.
During their construction process, different vendors and contractors used the word “particular” about the couple, which Gene and Jamie later learned was a “very, very, very nice way of saying royal pains in the asses.”
“So, we had become a little self conscious about (that),” Gene said.
Now, not only were they asking Henderson to create a piece from scratch, but they also wanted him to “tone down his Murray-ness” a bit. The couple wanted less of a bright-colored splash, a trademark of Henderson’s. He was happy to oblige.
“I want people to be happy,” Henderson said. “That’s the most important thing.”
The 60-inch by 80-inch painting features different splashes from the couple’s favorite memories, such as the Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears, the lights of Broadway in Times Square and elephants from a vacation to Thailand.
But hidden in the painting is a portrait of Jamie’s son, Blaine, as well as the dog tag necklace he wore.
Blaine died in 2020 at the age of 33, but he was actually the reason why Henderson was the perfect choice to complete this painting.
When Gene and Jamie initially pitched all their ideas to Henderson, Jamie, of course, told him of her son. Henderson, in return, shared with them the loss of Courtney. The conversation was filled with hugs and tears, but one thing was certain, Henderson was the only man for the job.
“It was like it was meant to be,” Gene said. “I just remember (Jamie) felt a much stronger bond in connection to him, and we were doing (the painting) anyway, but it took it to another level of connection and comfort.”
“We love him,” Gene added.
That personal bond is something Henderson strives to build in every piece he creates.
"You should continue this"
At every show Henderson attends, the artist always has an in-progress piece in the middle. It’s a piece that he starts at the beginning of a show, and by the end it’s a completed canvas.
This isn’t uncommon for artists. But he separates himself from a personal standpoint in two factors.
He wants people to chat with him as he paints. Henderson wants to connect with anyone and everyone at a show. He wants to learn about you and hear your story. And while he gabs with you, he somehow doesn’t miss a beat.
And what is certainly more surprising, he wants people to help him with his work.
Last September at The Philly Show, Henderson asked a 6-year-old to assist with a few brush strokes. At Fanatics Fest NYC last summer, Henderson asked several kids to sign his pieces.
“They're so proud to be able to, you know, to help,” Henderson said. “And then I kind of give them a little inspiration. I'll say, like, you know what? You're really good. You should continue this. Because if I had someone do that for me, I would have remembered that for the rest of my life.”
A passion rediscovered
“I call it controlled chaos,” Henderson said of his art studio, overflowing with paint, brushes and canvases.
Few precautions have been put in place since 2014, when he accidentally stumbled into an art style that would change the course of his life. In fact, the chances of accidentally splattering another painting are significantly higher now, though Henderson isn’t worried about that remotely.
“You can’t ruin it,” Henderson said. “It’s abstract.”
What has changed is the number of paintings.
On any given day, Henderson is working on up to a dozen different projects at once, anything from a Patrick Mahomes touchdown to a Bob Dylan album cover to even his own Sistine Chapel of Sports, a 120-inch by 70-inch ceiling canvas he unveiled at Art Basel, featuring 126 individual portraits combined into one masterpiece.
Since his trip to Miami in December, requests have skyrocketed. Henderson has been contacted by numerous galleries, sports shows and even universities.
He has never been busier, and it’s “exciting as hell.”
Henderson’s next big upcoming project stems from his work at Art Basel in Miami, where he met Stephen Zimkouski, a Miami-based entrepreneur, and his friend, former 12-year NBA veteran Ryan Anderson, who wanted to find a new identity following his basketball career, and found it through art.
And for Anderson, Henderson is the perfect collaborator, because not only is the project art-based, but memorabilia based as well.
“We've just had this amazing collaboration of ideas and getting them into life,” Anderson said. “I’m blown away by his art. ... I think our concept is going to kind of shake the foundation of memorabilia.”
Now, looking ahead to his biggest project ever, but also reflecting on his career, many feelings come to Henderson’s mind.
He’s thrilled at the work he has been able to accomplish for charities, but he’s also stricken with grief from the trauma his family endured. All he wanted to do his entire life was create art for others to enjoy, and for several years he lost all will to do so.
But now, he’s finally where he is supposed to be.
“There's a lot of crap I went through, and things are starting to look up,” Henderson said. “And it makes you feel great about what you've done.
“The passion’s back.”
Matt Liberman is a reporter and video producer for cllct.