Ember Tide

The artist

Henry Membreño's work centers on emotive abstraction, layering paint, gesture, and mixed media on panel. His practice explores repeated motions and recurring symbols, tracing the shifting landscape of memory — its persistence, fragility, and eventual transformation. Born in Weslaco, Texas in 1975, Membreño is the first American-born child of Salvadoran refugees. His parents fled El Salvador in 1973 due to his father's political ties to José Napoleón Duarte's Christian Democratic Party and the threats that followed. After a period of asylum in Mexico, the family resettled in the United States, where art soon became Henry's way of grounding and expressing himself. Membreño earned his degree from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. He went on to teach life drawing in New York before moving to Los Angeles, where his career expanded into television production, fashion, and wardrobe design at Sony Pictures Entertainment. Since 2006, he has led his studio, Henry Membreño Art, as owner and principal artist, specializing in painting and drawing. His work is represented nationally through collaborations with art consulting firms, with pieces placed in both residential and commercial collections across the United States. Membreño also commits his practice to service and community. He has donated artwork and taught with organizations including Cornerstone Recovery Inc., the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, The Human Rights Campaign, and the Gay Men's Chorus of Houston. His most transformative contributions include leading an art program inside Harris County Jail, where he has taught incarcerated individuals and shared art's power to heal and reframe possibility.