I am a self-confessed thalassophyle!

 

That is, I’m drawn to and have a great love for the sea.

 

The urge to be by the sea, has been with me since I was a child, although trips to the beach were few and far between.

 

I would long for the summer holidays, when as a family we would go to Bamburgh in Northumberland and spend two weeks in a caravan, every year! Our days were spent playing for hours in the sand, arranging shells or building sand sculptures. Of course we would go in the sea whatever the weather, coming out with purple lips, chittering uncontrollably with the cold. Wonderful!

 

Since having my own children, we’ve spent every possible chance camping by the sea, exploring every Island off the West Coast of Scotland and of course I had to show them Bamburgh.

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And so it is in my DNA that my work should reflect this love.

 

Discovering a new beach or pocket of sand, fills me with great excitement and I cannot wait to pack my rucksack with as limited a palette as I can bare, paper/sketchbook, easel and a board and get down onto the sand and rocks.

 

I think being out in the landscape gives my paintings more energy and life. When you are working in the moment, there’s usually no time to think for too long, you are just reacting to the elements and the place in a very immediate way. Slightly possessed, almost in a trance!

 

 It makes me work at an incredible speed, trying to capture that fleeting moment in time, before the light changes.

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​Painting to me is a dance, a battle, a puzzle, a need, in which light is the essential element. If there’s no light, then I’m not really inspired. I’m continually looking for that fleeting moment when it brings the landscape alive. Whether coruscating light on the water or reflected on the wet sand, the light draws me into the landscape, intensifying the shadows, giving a sense of form and drama, carving out the composition.

 

My painting process echoes my surroundings as I flood the paper with colliding pools of colour using acrylic-inks and watercolour. My medium is as spontaneous and unpredictable as the ever-changing elements that dominate my surroundings.  I don’t want to be in complete control of the media. I want to allow the colour to “do its own thing”, as I think this is when the magic can happen.

I use soft pastels to define and draw into the composition, enjoying the rich density of colour in contrast to the translucency of the watercolour.

I am trying to evoke the feeling of being there, the taste of salt on your lips, wind in your hair and

sand between your toes, I want to draw the viewer in and give them that sense of being right there with me.

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I have lived and worked as a full-time artist in the small village of Ratagan in the West Highlands of Scotland, near the Isle of Skye since 1988.

 

I graduated with a B.A.Hons Degree in Glass from Edinburgh College of Art in 1987, then spent the following year at the Royal College of Art, London.

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My work is sold in galleries throughout Scotland and online, selling to private collectors worldwide.

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Admirers of Helen's work have often commented on how the paintings make them feel transported to that place.