After returning to the art world, following a lengthy break,painter Helen Hughes has found herself to be much in demand.
Specialising in creating abstract form and and using bold blocks of colours in her work, Helen has opened her exhibition, ’Colourway’, her first in the Isle of Man, after spending 10 years away from the art world.
Last year, the former arts teacher, who moved to the island many years ago, rediscovered her love of painting, and began to create a new series of paintings to an almost instant, positive reaction.
Since her re-emergance into the artistic world, interest in her work has grown dramatically, with her online prolife on Instagram gaining more than 14,00 followers, and her ’Pinterest’ page generating a reach of 300,000. She also maintains a page on the prestigious Saatchi gallery page.
’I decided during the summer last year that I would go for it again, and get back into the passion that I love,’ said Helen, at the opening of her exhibition at the Isle Gallery, Tynwald Mills.
’I think I had a bit of luck, and people were genuinely interested in my art work, but I don’t know why it has taken off so well.
’The online interest has been generated over the past year. That in itself is quite hard work, as you don’t suddenly appear and people get to hear about you. But I got my first sale, in Chicago, and I just went for it from there.
’As for exhibitions, I haven’t done anything like this for a long time, and it is really nice seeing everything, all my paintings, up in one place. ’
’Colourway’ is her first exhibition in more than 10 years, and features a range of pictures that are full of arresting colours and patterns.
’Abstracts and colour is just what calls to me,’ she said, regarding her chosen style.
’I love bright colours and you can see some of them are non-objective, which are more to do with a concept in my head, which I try to interpret on the canvas in the best way I can.
’They are paintings very much "of the moment", although the picture is layered over different times. Then you would work on top of that again. You work very intuitively, and I don’t think I could ever recreate one painting twice.
’It depends on your mood, what you are thinking and how you are feeling at the time. I always find it is important to stand back and to give it time.
’But the paintings are an emotional response to what I am thinking of at the time. The release of expression is a great feeling.
’Obviously, this is a completely different style to realism, where you can look at a painting and see exactly what it is. There are quite a lot of realist paintings on the island, and this is completely different.
’People may look at it and say "oh, this isn’t art", or "I can do that". But quite simply, they haven’t. I have done these works and you can see that, simply by doing them, they are artistic in themselves and they are worth looking at.’
Colourway is on display at the Isle Gallery, Tynwald Mills, until Sunday, March 17.
More of Helen’s work can be viewed at saatchiart.com/helenhughes
by Mike Wade
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