Homestead Gardens VIII Collage

Curiosity is the key, observation leads to discovery. Born in Cornwall UK.Helen Hill later studied Fine art at Central School of Art and Design, London. In 1980,she settled in France where she works and exhibits, now living in the Dordogne in the south west. Her upbringing was near St Ives until the age of 17, much influenced by her ceramist mother, Barbara A.Hill and Cornwall with it's 20th century art and ceramic history. She is inspired by the abandoned mining area along the coast together with the exceptional Cornish light, renowned for many centuries by numerous famous artists. “I’m consciously inspired by landscapes, a view from a window, a stroll through the woodlands or a glimpse through garden vegetation, those of Périgord with its multi-facette forests, of my beloved Cornwall and its now abandoned mines and the undulating pasture land of the Limousin area. Light flickering, sparkling on water, filtering through the woodland undergrowth or menacing skys inspire me to transcribe the emotion felt. The forests of the Dordogne and the calm softness of the Limousin area can be found in my work. My love of nature in all it's forms and the wonder it inspires is my principle driving force and reason for creating. I'm constantly looking for a way of conveying this uplifting sentiment in my work" Collage has always been her principal technique. Paper, all sorts of paper but it must be supple, worked on, reworked on, before starting the composition. Helen Hill creates graphic images on the paper with a theme or subject in mind, however, it’s possible on occasion to be inspired by an area of a prepared piece of paper. Her prints, etchings, monotypes and rubbings are all to be found in the collages all torn up : certain patterns can be be found repeated, reworked but never exactly the same. After the paper preparation, it’s a question of choosing certain areas and tearing them out of the sheets, assembling, composing the collage to create the final work. Collage allows her to build the composition, adding bit by bit, little by little. Mistakes don’t exist, it’s just a question of certain pieces of paper being inappropriate in a given context, so, they become simply partially or totally hidden. The paper preparation step is the creation of a language : words to be chosen and reassembled to create complete text “poems” / ”invitations”.