Helen Utsal is a contemporary landscape painter living and working on Vancouver Island. Spending time in Nature is a critical aspect of her inspiration and practice; a space for meditation, creation and renewal. Helen speaks about her creative process: “Trees have become my people, with all the same diversity of shapes, moods and personalities. I don’t seek to reproduce reality, but rather reflect my impressions and feelings to express the many moods of the forests. Using unexpected colours helps me to prompt the viewer to see the forest as I do, a place of wonder and awe, magic, and possibilities. With paints, charcoal, and chalk I seek to convey Nature’s vitality, complexity, and beauty.” Helen studied Fine Art at Concordia University, and she worked as a studio assistant to artists and photographers including Tom Hopkins, Graeme Metson, Donigan Cumming and Michael Flomen. Helen has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Helen Utsal’s studio is in the Comox Valley, Tintown.
Original oil paintings, Prints and artcards. I sell original paintings from 5" x5" (100$) to very large canvases, 48"x60" (4000) last year I was thrilled to sell a large canvas at the show as well as lots of 12"x12" prints and smaller original paintings. Most of my paintings are of of old growth trees, but I paint crows, canoes and the ocean as well. I work with oil and cold wax medium on cradled wood panel or canvas. My art is impressionic in spirit based on realism with a bit of room for the imagination.
We respectfully acknowledge that the Filberg Festival takes place on the unceded traditional territory of the K'omoks First Nation, Gila 'kasla...Hay ch q'a'.
