Helen Rhodes

I was born in Staffordshire, England in 1970 and studied textile design at Loughborough College of Art and Design graduating in 1992 with a First Class Honours Degree. Painting was something I did to support my woven textile designs but it was this that I carried on when I left college.

Since 1994 I have been selling my original art work to galleries nationwide. Winning the Imperial Cancer card competition two years in succession spurred me on to find a card publisher and I successfully sold greetings cards through various publishers.

In 1997 I joined DeMontfort Fine Art and my reputation and following grew. I was the recipient of the Gift of the Year in 1998 and was awarded Best Up and Coming Artist by the Fine Art Trade Guild in 1999.

My work has a unique style. It combines intensely rich colours, textures and patterns with naïve compositions. Most of my original paintings have torn edges hinting that each image is a fragment of a larger painting giving an element of preciousness to each piece. The richness of my mixed media work is achieved through a lengthy process involving different techniques and paints. The extra depth of colour is given by a final layer of varnish.

I took a year off in 2003 to start a family and then gradually started working again toward my first solo exhibition at the Frog and Mouse Gallery in Leicester in 2004. This was a huge success, so much so that I exhibited there again in 2005.


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