HELEN REYNOLDS
Helen Reynolds is an emerging Wellington artist with a rich, experimental practice, making art through drawing, painting, sculpture and installation.
A simple line that turns and turns each time it comes close to the edge of the paper forms the basis of the work in Phthalo + Quinacridone + Azo. It’s a type of mark making that echoes some of the first deliberate marks made by humankind over 35,000 years ago, or the childhood joy of applying pigment to paper.
Reynolds paints each sheet of watercolour paper with this same line; once in phthalo blue, once again over the top of that line in quinacridone magenta, and once more in azo yellow. The saturation and density of the paint is strong at first, then as the brush covers the paper and the paint is absorbed into the paper, the line becomes lighter and lighter. The natural variations in the process start to produce unpredictable changes in the colour of the lines, as the translucent primaries layer up over each other.
The paintings become both a meditative, peaceful expression and an exploration of the properties of colour, pigment, brush and paper.