...the assumption that underlies this dualistic aspect of all being and existence is the world is in motion, that things are constantly undergoing processes of transformation, deformation, and restoration, and that the essence of life and being is movement.
Gary Witherspoon (student of Navajo art and language)
I was born and grew up in West Dorset. This extraordinary landscape has many ancient hill forts and woodlands that mark the land and stretch down to a coastline abundant in fossils from the Jurassic period.
Moving through the years this deep awareness of time and the earth passing through many phases permeated my imagination as did the dramatic skylines. It is a challenge to try to capture something that is moving and changing all the time with painted brushstrokes - the shifting clouds, colours, reflections...every second the landscape is made new by subtle transformations.
Transience and the living presence within a landscape are now constant themes for my work as well as drawing from archaeology and sometimes Mythology. I am interested in how people felt in the past, as human beings, how they found meaning in their lives and why they often turned to their art as a vehicle for connecting with forces beyond their control and understanding.
The experience of making something from raw materials is a simple and fundamental one. The coldness of clay, the smell of linseed oil, the familiar feel of wooden tools or brushes connect you to the elements. Over time the process of choosing the right colour and quality of paint becomes unconscious and instinctive.
During painting hundreds of decisions are made - from minute changes to sometimes a complete destruction of previous work. The painting becomes a vehicle for ideas and feelings that are explored on an unconscious level during the building of layers. Painting helps to bring ‘feeling’ into a deeper and more universal realm.
Breathing Time by Helen Garrett is a collection of paintings, each a unique exploration into the ever- transforming context in which we find ourselves as human beings. Touching the edges of philosophy, archaeology and physics the work becomes a vehicle for contemplation as we reflect on the human experience.
My painting process begins with the creation of a spontaneous and chaotic ground of tones and marks. As the work evolves and develops, forms manifest and images emerge as symbols, figures or light. My intention is for the central image to be found at the completion of the painting and yet for previous layers to remain visible as an evolution of the work.
Some forms are significant and create a scene whilst others stay a while or are painted over, recede and are lost. It is like connecting with a deep current of vitality and universal movement. Amidst the motion there is always a sense of stillness - a deep presence that permeates all.
Painting for me is a kind of dance between action / intention and yielding / listening. There is a sense of revelation in the openness required to let go into the work. It is a work full of desire and risk and unknowing. A space is created where inner and outer worlds of experience touch and something occurs or is released - transformed. It could be called an interface or threshold... this is where my interest lies.
Our need to express and communicate through image seems to be innate - a long tradition going back over 40,000 years to people of the ice age and beyond. Our ancestors used the contours of cave walls to evoke forms of bull, antelope or woman... I am moving with this process. The paintings seem to reach backwards and forwards in time. We are no different to those humans of long ago in that we extend ourselves to express or communicate with forces beyond our control. This extension can result in a tangible form whether a sculpture, sound, painted mark or dance. I am interested in our relationship to material, whether for necessity or symbolic expression.
Part of our human experience is metaphysical - extending far beyond our physical bodies. Ancient cultures and rituals would acknowledge these dimensions alongside the earthly ones. It could be said that externalizing our ideas into physical form has been essential for our evolution as human beings.
Human civilizations may flourish or recede, there is mass migration of people and animals across the land, earth platelets shift beneath our feet, volcanic eruptions destroy and renew, particles merge and transform, people fall in love. Within each human life, significant memories remain or fade away and we attempt to create the story of our lives. This is no less magnificent than the birthing of stars. We are insignificant, yet we are unique and individual...irreplaceable, and we change everything.
Since childhood Helen has been interested in ancient history. Having the opportunity to teach Art in Wiltshire Museum and Dorset County Museum has deepened her passion for archaeology and she has created techniques and classes that support engagement with these ancient artefacts in a tactile and imaginative way - using drawing, creative writing and sound to evoke conversation and learning.
It is so exciting that we are constantly discovering more. With new technologies we understand more about the way things are made or how far they might have travelled. Sometimes we have to re- assess everything and keep an open mind, I think this is very healthy.
Helen first visited Crete in 2002, during the visit she felt a strong resonance with the land and culture. In September 2024 she visited the Archeological Museum of Heraklion again and was astonished by the skill and beauty of the artefacts there, especially finds from the Minoan culture (early bronze age - pre-palatial period (3000-1900 BC) she began to research these ancient people whose aesthetic expression seems so unique discovering that they were highly influential across the globe where trade networks circled the Aegean and Near East and recent evidence shows that they may have reached as far as Europe, possibly sourcing Britain for tin / metals, copper being exploited for the production of functional and more ideological objects at that time.
I am fascinated in clay figurines, faces and votive offerings...whether found high in the mountains of Crete or in caves or wells of the British Isles. The symbolism of burial goods and practices teach us so much about past beliefs and the breadth of the human imagination.
In the Middle Bronze Age Crete, sealing systems were used to account for trading or exchange of goods. Hieroglyphic script and Linear A (2000-1900 BC) and Linear B developed over time into the Greek alphabet which is so visually enigmatic. This is language that evolved from simple drawn marks and symbols. Why have we felt this urge to express and communicate using material to represent our ideas?
The stirring images and atmosphere of physical objects from civilizations gone before sometimes appear in my work. I enjoy the idea that when visiting an ancient site, a kind of time travelling can seem to occur, a rushing of images, physical responses to material and matter. Many of my paintings are landscape based expressing the conversational and dynamic relationship between the environment and ourselves.
Beauty and terror always, mortality, immortality. What are we? Half animal, half angel, bound by gravity yet lifted by conscious direction or movement. Caught between, failing, falling, overcoming and always at the edge of our own experience and understanding.
I love the contrast of earthy tones, umbers, deep greys set against hazy electric blues like the moonlight or sea mist in winter here... or when walking noticing the bright pink of a single flower sticking out of the dark clay.
Helen Garrett is a West Dorset artist who uses the earthly and elemental material of oil paint to find form for her ideas. Throughout her artistic career Helen has been inspired by ancient landscapes and archaeological finds - enjoying the imaginative processes that they can ignite. She draws a parallel with her creative process in which she discovers and reveals forms and hidden landscapes within the ground of her paintings.
Helen states that before we can ask ourselves to care for the environment and preserve life, do we need to remind ourselves what is lovable about our own species, what are we preserving and protecting, what is there to love?
Without personal meaning there is no desire or drive to act. Without openness there can be no empathy. Without love there can be no hope.
She therefore brings to her teaching a dimension of deeper dialogue and reflection around these ideas bringing the attention of her groups towards the astonishing beauty of natural form, diversity, and the unique perception and value of every individual.
Public museums are precious and essential places where we can step out of our lives, our own time for a moment and imagine other ways of living or representing our inner landscape of meaning and community.
I believe that when certain conditions are present, we flourish and have an inherent desire for harmony and connection and believe this to be the basis of human nature. Sometimes a kind of connection, which may be described as communion, occurs where words fall away. This is endlessly mysterious.
Art in all its forms opens us to meaning beyond the confines of society, connects us in a healthy way, strengthening community and igniting growth in human culture. Perhaps most importantly though, Art offers us a view of shared human experience – which can bring empathy and hope.
ANGEL OF A FLAMING STAR by Helen Garrett
This painting, as some of Helen’s others, offers an imagined emotional landscape filled with implications of other beings or other senses of existence. When not just looking at it but watching it, the floating imagery offers mysterious others, as though spirits or energies attempting to escape the pigments which hold them in. It is compelling and upsetting, demanding that we admit to the existence of some energies deep within the world we may share with our unknown selves.
Robert Golden, Photographer, Film Maker