Q: Originally from Scandanavia are some of your favorite things about living and working in New York?

A: I’m from Denmark; my family moved to the States when i was 13. I recently left China for New York City, after 13 years living there. Being in China allowed me to concentrate on a body of work, mainly large paintings called Mountain Machinery (above). Living in Brooklyn has been a big change; I now teach at Parsons and SVA, and have a small studio where I continue my painting.

Q: Do you keep a sketchbook? What is the balance between art you create on paper [or other analog medium] versus in the computer?

A: I work in notebooks and I make edition books; books for me are my mental filing cabinets/foldable stages and final work.

Q: What is the most important item in your studio?

A: My health.

Q: How do you know when the art is finished?

A: It’s never finished, unless it’s sold or given away. I rework or use notebooks and paintings all the time.

Q: What was your favorite book as a child?

A: A Danish book called Journey to America (Flugten til America) in which a bunch of kids sail to America where the streets are paved with gold and where they smoke cigars while precariously perched in money trees.(who knew that kids liked cigars!)

Q: What is the best book you’ve recently read?

A: Night by Elie Wiesel

Q: If you had to choose one medium to work in for an entire year, eliminating all others, what medium would you choose?

A: Pen and ink.

Q: What elements of daily life exert the most influence on your work practice?

A: Free time and low money stress

Q: What was the [Thunderbolt] painting or drawing or film or otherwise that most affected your approach to art? 

A: Alan  E. Cober’s work

Q: Who was the [Thunderbolt] teacher or mentor or visiting artist who most influenced you early in your training or career?

A: My high school art teacher Harald Witherspoon 

Q: What would be your last supper?

A:  ( Sichuan chili chicken )

Henrik Drescher: born in denmark, no art school, plenty of travel; work in the collections of the museum of modern art, the u.s. library of congress, the getty museum, the victoria and albert museum, and more; lots of awards,mostly forgotten, but much appreciated.