12 Artists, curated by Kathryn Campbell Dodd and Seren Stacey, explore the importance of Light. Viv Albiston, Justine Allison, Amanda Blake, Lynne Bebb, Louise Bird, Helen Booth, Toril Brancher, Kathryn Campbell Dodd, Laura Edmunds, Shauneen Ferris, Seren Stacey, Rose Wood
“I remember walking through 1 metre deep snow - the sound of my heavy body making a repetitive dull hum that was swallowed immediately by the quiet.
Everywhere was white - I was surrounded by the most sublime vista. I couldn't quite grasp what I was feeling. It felt like every atom was vibrating at the same frequency.
I turned a corner and there she lay - Nature in all her divine glory - laid bare, menacing, beautiful and deadly present”
Helen Booth -Skaftafell Glacier - Artist in Residence - Iceland 2020 Helen Booth’s recent paintings concentrate on the limitless variations of the single dot. Often the dots follow disjointed lines, or they crowd together in amorphous blocks. Sometimes they are destroyed by gravity with dripped paints. The works explore both an impulsive and repetitive way of mark-making that is both gestural and meditative. Straight and dynamic lines often appear alongside the more gossamer transient dots in the paintings.
The dot itself can be many things, a puncture wound, a beginning, an end, an existence, or a loss. It can be the end of a sentence or punctuation in a landscape. It can symbolise life, and it can represent death – a complete stop.
When Booth paints, she tries to balance action and inaction. Oil allows her to do this, each layer forcing a pause in the work’s construction. She pours and drags the paint across the surface - this juxtaposition of imposed structure and the loosely applied paint is an emotional response to the painting process. Her restrained palette creates work that focuses on the mark without the distraction of colour.
This way of working, the hands-off exchanges of the paint, the force of gravity and the element of chance are fundamental to her ideas. The internal alchemy, the human condition, of being and not being, of life and death, is what Booth is striving to capture within the work.
A recent Residency in Iceland has greatly informed her practice. Standing in what can only be described as a Divine landscape has reinforced Booth’s personal belief that Nature is the most potent force and that trying to capture the essence of Nature in its purest form is essential to her as an artist.
The cycle of birth and rebirth, in life and in Nature, is key.
BIOGRAPHY
Booth studied at Wimbledon School of Art, graduating in Fine Art Painting in 1989.
In 2019 she received a Pollock Krasner Award from New York for her painting and also 1 of the 12 International Abstract Painting Awards from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation in the USA.
Helen Booth is exhibited at various galleries throughout the UK and her work is held in several private collections around the world.
