Helen Melland
Alongside, 2011, Acrylic and Gouache on canvas, (43cm x 43cm)
Angel Bird, 2010, Acrylic and gouache on canvas, (23 x 30cm)
Back Again (detail) 2012, Acrylic and gouache on linen
Overseen, 2012, Acrylic and gouache on linen, (53 x 79cm)
The Bears, 2012, Acrylic and gouache on linen, (51 x 51cm)
The Yield, 2012, Acrylic and gouache on canvas (40 x 40cm)
ThreeFold, 2012, Acrylic and gouache on canvas, (51 x 51cm)
Trace, 2012, Acrylic and gouache on linen, (31 x 27cm)
Helen Melland has always painted and for a long time was largely self-taught until, in 2002, she completed an MA in Fine Art. Since then she has exhibited widely and has work held in public galleries and private collections, including the New Hall Art Collection at Cambridge University, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
In November 2012 Helen’s painting Three Fold appeared as the cover image of Resurgence & Ecologist 275.
Helen’s practice is concerned with investigating imaginative and other worldly spaces. Transformation, archetypes and myth, the chaos and clarity of dreams, interconnections, memories, echoes of memories and the collision of unknown realms that merge are all recurrent themes in her work.
Her dreamlike paintings reflect an interest in multiple dimensions coexisting. Helen often uses flat space contrasted with intricate layers of varied paint textures and finely drawn line, from which juxtaposed picture planes emerge, to create otherworldly qualities.
“Ambiguous shapes, plants, strange creatures and landscapes populate Melland’s canvases…[H]er paintings are born out of an interest in exploring the sensation rather than the illusion of space as found in medieval painting and traditional Japanese picture planes…Brimming with sensation and visual energy, her work is an invitation to immerse in speculation and reverie.” — Leann Barber
