Helen Ballardie

Narrative
and storytelling is a very strong part of Helen Ballardie's paintings and she
takes elements of stories from the past and incorporates them into her
paintings, bringing a new story to life.

In this
series of works, inspired by the artist’s garden in France, Helen often weaves
elements of collage in the paintings. Helen
likes the juxtapositions made by collage and how, in viewing them, we often try
to make sense of the relationships between the random objects and images
featured. In this way, an additional
narrative is added to the painting by the viewer. Helen likes to take her subjects out of their
context, to give them a flat background. She's not interested in full
landscapes or interior scenes, but rather the interplay between abstraction and
figuration, flattening the images into more of a map like configuration.