About Helen Cockburn
My work is concerned with the relationship between language and images - the idea that words are themselves images - and an attempt to create visual equivalents to the sensations evoked by particular words or phrases.
While poetry, music and place are the usual starting points, the nature of the work becomes apparent only during the process of making. I do not make preparatory drawings so chance plays an important part in the process with the materials themselves often dictating the direction of each piece. The aim is always to provoke and stimulate the imagination by suggestion, enabling narratives and associations to arise intuitively rather than consciously.
I work with gouache and found materials - wood, stone, string, paper and metal - built up in layers over a painted surface and then reworked with combinations of paint, pencil, pen and ink. The materials are collected from around my house and garden, from the street or beach and recycled from discarded work, old books and scraps of card and paper. The grid format provides a formal structure but has endless permutations in terms of composition, colour and texture, particularly in its potential for variations in scale, and a content which is perhaps as much musical as it is visual.
'It is signs which have no exact meaning that provoke a magic sense.' Miro
I am a self-taught artist with a background in editorial and book illustration.
I now work mainly with found objects, paint and collage, still fascinated by the relationship between words and images but with poetry, maps and ancient landscape my main areas of interest. I am currently experimenting with the artists' book, a medium with apparently endless possibilities in both form and content.
I live and work with my husband in north-east Suffolk not far from the coast, where we run a framing, gilding and bookbinding business. I also teach groups and individuals at our workshop as well as running courses at art clubs in the area. I am particularly interested in helping people use their imagination through art, enabling them the freedom to experiment and play, an approach which often leads to some profound work.
Our workshop is located in a beautiful situation - at the top of a hill, encircled by a moat, with wonderful views of the surrounding countryside. Please contact me if you would like more information on classes or workshops.
Visitors are of course very welcome at the workshop but please call us first - our hours can be unpredictable. Please see my contact page for details.
For details of current and future shows please see my Exhibitions page.
