Helen Elizabeth Kuumbi |Artist| Cornwall
Helen Elizabeth Kuumbi MA, Artist and folk musician
Playing with paint and strings
​
​
Contemporary landscape painting and other forms of experimentation
​
​
Themes: solitary experience of the natural landscape, moments of transcendence , sense of the sublime, the vastness of history, the smallness of our lives, the beauty of nature, the weight of a moment, the process of memories and the subconscious in expressive creativity
​
My artwork is an outcome of the physical and intellectual exploration the landscape, rivers and sea. Places we perceive as wild have been shaped through time by people and natural forces , this leaves a visual mark which adds to their narrative. Through the process of painting, I experience a present sense of space; a moment shaped by weather and seasonality, and from this also explore its past. Common subjects in my work are ancient monuments, woodlands, and moorland. I work predominantly in oils, but also acrylic, mixed media and natural inks (that I produce myself).
​
My paintings also explore fleeting, elemental parts of our natural world - snapshots of a single moment of the waters surface or sky - parts of our world that are in state of constant flux. I am interested in the sublime beauty of the darker, wilder parts of our natural world and the timelessness of vast landscapes and open seas.
​
Colour is a key theme in my work; with every piece I am experimenting with colour strategies and questioning the way we perceive colour and how it can become part of the narrative of the artwork and their power to convey emotions and express mood.
​​
Artist bio
​
I am a Cornwall based contemporary landscape and seascape painter working in oils, acrylics and natural inks. My work explores the narrative of place - its natural and human history and I have a strong passion for colour.
​
I enjoyed art throughout my childhood then my education and work took me along different paths. Then in 2011 two serendipitous event - a job note-taking for a fine art lecture series and a painting left on the back seat of my car - resulted in an invitation to join an art collective and take part in a number of shows and events in Plymouth and Bristol (2011-2013).
​
Life forced a hiatus, but then in 2017 I had my own space and began to make art again. In 2018 a self-directed residency in Venice propelled forward my interest in painting and colour. In 2019 I had my first solo show, Mountains are beautiful and life is confusing, an outcome of a solo road-trip and three weeks of sketching in the alps. Since then I have shown my work regularly in Cornwall and Devon and sell my work through my studio, which I open to the public.
​​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​​
