Term: June ’25
Helena Mcgrath (b.1968, London, UK) studied BA English Literature and Art History at Cambridge University (1987-90) and MA Fine Art at University of Hertfordshire (2015-17). She worked as a Script Editor and Producer of TV drama for fifteen years (1990 – 2005) before becoming an artist. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer in Fine Art at University of Hertfordshire, UK.
Helena is a figurative painter whose work attempts to balance accessible narrative with pictorial invention. She aims to create a tension between the abstract qualities of paint and the representation of people and things. She works with oil paint or water-based tempera and charcoal.
Often her paintings are a kind of autofiction, re-creating scenes from own life that are blended with stories, characters and settings borrowed from literature, art history or popular culture. The fictional elements in her paintings are sometimes incorporated as text, but more often as images taken from found photographs, book illustrations and other artworks. They embody certain ideas or emotions and express a kind of personal mythology that lies behind everyday life.
Helena is interested in the way in which stories organise and give meaning to human experience. While narrative is increasingly used as a tool for political, social and economic manipulation, she believes that it also provides opportunities for empathy, communication and creativity.
