Fireweed
12-14th April 2024
An exhibition of paintings by Helen Feilden
This exhibition is a series of fireweed paintings that track the summer, autumn, into first days of winter of 2023 both in terms of how willow herb plants change during that season but also themes of how a summer love waxed and waned over that time. Willow herb, which is one of Scotland’s most riotous and colourful plants is also known as fireweed because it grows where the soil has been disturbed after a fire. For me it symbolises joy and wildness and rebirth.
I am Helen Feilden, an artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. I have been working on paintings of intimate landscapes, still life and occasional abstract work inspired by external seasons, sunlight, colour and the living world, as well as my own internal landscapes since 2020. I am inspired by going out in nature and noticing the seasonal changes happening. My work is influenced by how I feel about that experience, and also by what’s going on in my life concurrently. I mainly work in acrylics and like their immediacy and versatility. I use drawing, writing, photography and digital tools as part of my practice. I like to work in a season-led sequence of paintings on a particular theme.
Summer 2023
1 - Scottish Jungle Vibe (£270 - 61x61cm)
I like to listen to music whilst I’m being in nature, and also when I'm painting in the studio. Over the last few years my creative practice has developed and at the same time I've been enjoying listening to jungle, drum n bass and breakbeat type music. Its full of energy and reminds me of being a youngster in the 90s. This painting is a nod to those joyful moments dancing around in my studio.
2 - Summer Love (£225 - 51x51cm)
When I made this one, I had not had much time for creative work for a while due to a new love affair that had started and this painting poured out of me. I have always loved these dancing flowers in July. They line roads and hillsides, building sites, parks and gardens. A few months afterwards when I needed a name for the painting I noticed a parallel between the season that was passing outside and the one inside.
3 -July Breeze (£225 - 51x51cm)
4 - Susurrating (£225 51x51cm)
I have wanted to work big for a while. One of my favourite paintings is David Hockney’s Arrival of Spring in Woldgate. Its enormous! The same scale as an actual forest! I paint in my spare room at home so the 90x90cm and 120x90cm paintings are the biggest I can sensibly do in that space. This was the first of the "Big" ones. They don't look so huge on the walls but they felt very challenging for me when I started.
5 - Midsummer Song (Sold)
Late Summer 2023
7 - Fairy Dust (£175 - 41x41cm)
8 - Turn of the Season (£135 - 33x33cm inc frame)
6 - Bearing Fruit (Sold)
10. A Better Perspective (Sold)
One of the hardest won paintings I have ever made, partly due to its size, and partly due to the complexity of the image.. The painting is about when I went for a windy walk one day to clear my head and the willow herb was dancing around with the last of the fluffy "Fairies" blowing around. Time for a deep breath and feel the wind in my ears.....
9. True Colours (Sold)
This painting was a bit different from my usual practice because I spent a lot of time considering the composition and playing with it till I got it exactly how I wanted. That’s quite different for me. I usually paint almost thoughtlessly in a flow state
Autumn 2023
The autumn colours start green then as the leaves die back they change colour. Not all willow herb's behave in the same way. Some leaves turn red, orange and pink before fading to yellow, gold and then beige and brown. Some just go brown right away. Whatever they do, by the end of autumn the leaves are dead and ready to be let go of. Nature makes letting go a beautiful process.
11 - In Flames (Sold)
12 - End of the Affair (Sold)
13 - Aftermath (£400 - 90x90cm)
14 - Time to Let Go (Sold)
15 - Healthy Decay (Sold)
Winter 2023
16 - Bury the Bones (£465 - 120x90cm)
In 2023 the first snow came in late November so it landed on the last bits of willow herb before they had completely died back for winter. This drew a line under the series of paintings, as well us coinciding with my letting go of the events of summer 2023. It also allowed me to explore a much more limited colour palette that usual. Its one of my favourites!
17 - Crisp Morning (£125 - 30x30cm inc frame)
18 - Cold and Quiet (£100 - 30x30cm inc frame)
19 - Freeze (£75 - 10x10cm inc frame)
20 - Fragments (£125 - 30x30cm inc frame)
21 - Snow Day (Sold)
In late November and early December 2023 I had a spell of 4-5 weeks where I got very playful and was messing around with collage. These are some of those experiments. I also have a related and more more abstract mini-series which can be found here.
Six of the paintings in this exhibit were made in early 2024. I realised I had more wall space to play with in the SaltSpace Gallery than I thought when I applied for the venue hire. So I chose to make the most of it!
I proceeded to work a bit differently than I have before to really make a cohesive body of work for the exhibition. What I did was assess what space I need to fill and then worked backwards from there to choose another set of paintings to create at particular sizes. I then retrospectively included them in the Fireweed series I made in sequence during summer and autumn of 2023. It has been interesting to play with how I was able to sort of time travel back to various times last year while I was painting, but also to notice the inevitable effect on the new paintings of my actually having moved on from then in reality.
The Fireweed series was originally about both the seasonal growth and decay of willow herb, and the parallel occurrence of a summer love affair I was involved in which is now historical. My work is always influenced by how I’m feeling when I make it, but my feelings in 2024 are different than they were last year. Technically, my experience and skill level in working with the subject matter has grown, and the increased confidence I have in working at larger sizes now is very apparent to me and I think has made the exhibition more visually impactful.
The ones I made in 2024 are: 6. Bearing Fruit, 10. A Better Perspective, 11. In Flames, 13. Aftermath, 16. Bury the Bones, 17. A Nostalgic Moment
22 - A Nostalgic Moment (£465 - 120x90cm)