Helen Arthur
Artwork for Helen Arthur
Details
How would you describe the work you do and why?
What started back in 2016 as kitchen table artmaking led to a full-blown passion for mixed-media painting and experimental printmaking. I am now an established gestural artist with a love of colour seeking to balance representation with expressive abstraction. From the outset I had a lot of interest in my work and began exhibiting first with h.Art open studios and then in galleries and open calls around the country. Since then my work has gone to collectors around the world.
For you what does being an artist mean?:
I feel really alive when I'm immersed in the process, surrounded by materials and finding ways to express myself. I also value sharing this joy, and feel that it is part of the role of artist to infect others with creative energy and confidence. With this in mind, I have set up grant-funded projects working with Herefordshire Council (2025) and Arts Council England (2021–24) to serve creativity and wellbeing workshops to rural communities. In March 2025, I launched Black Hill Arts Events (with a UKSPF cultural grant). In 2022-24, I co-curated the touring Mappa Marches exhibition and workshops (funded by the Arts Council).
Describe what you call yourself/your practice?:
“When a landscape becomes meaningful to you, it gets under your skin to create vivid memories. My paintings and process represent an emotional response to landscape…” The wild light in the Black Mountains (Y Mynydd Du) – where I live and work – impacts my creativity in an inescapable way. Every layer of paint and each bold brushstroke or detailed etching mark invites you, the viewer, to reconnect with how you feel, fully immersed in nature. I'm very curious and exploratory so I naturally gravitate towards mixed media painting as well as printmaking. I have innovated and discovered my own technique to combine etching with painting, as well as loving oil and cold-wax palette knife painting for texture. In 2024, I published a book, The Winding Light, in which I reproduce over 20 paintings and tells the story of their conception in a mix of personal anecdote, unorthodox artistic technique, history and topographical writing.
Your practice & activities include e.g workshops, teaching:
I continue to teach a range of printmaking techniques in my pop-up print club (run through a WhatsApp group and my website). I also teach a weekend painting course, Abstracting the Welsh borders landscape in Longtown, HR2 0LD.
CV & Education, relevant & leading to your artistic practice:
I grew up in North Wales, but left to study at Cambridge before beginning a digital media career with the BBC in London. When I relocated to the Welsh borders with my husband and two young children, I really felt I had returned home. This homecoming released latent creativity and I took up printmaking (2017), which developed into a love of painting four years later. I also have an MA in Creative writing (University of East Anglia, 2000), which has informed my visual creativity too.
Exhibitions in the last 3 years:
2025: Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA), Wales Contemporary (Chelsea), Royal Cambrian open (Conwy), Oriel Cric open (Crickhowell), Perfect Hill group show (Artlandish, Hereford), The Artists’ Gallery (Ludlow), Spring Gallery (Cheltenham)
2024: Royal Cambrian open, Oriel Cric open, Mappa Marches joint show at The Courtyard (Hereford), The Old Mayor’s Parlour (lead artist), Herefordshire Art Week open studios, Oriel Cric open studios, Cowbridge Arts society open and artist’s demo, Tarpey Gallery (Derby)
2023: Found Gallery (Brecon), Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, The Lake Gallery (West Kirby), Royal Cambrian open (Conwy), Oriel Cric open (Crickhowell), Tarpey Gallery (Derby)
Your gallery outlets/stockists:
Bluestone Gallery, Hay on Wye
The Courtyard, Hereford
Skirrid Studio and Gallery, Longtown