Mini Proust with Helen Blake
Helen Blake grew up in Belfast and graduated in Visual Art from Aberystwyth University. She lives in County Wicklow and exhibits her work internationally.
Henry Martin: What is your current state of mind?
Helen Blake: I’m conflicted. My own contentment butts up against the full-on horror of what is happening around the world, especially in Palestine. I cannot believe what we are seeing and I cannot believe that it is still going on.
Henry: Who are your heroes in real life?
Helen: My three children, all now well into adulthood. They are very different personalities, but they are all kind, intelligent, resourceful, creative and whip-smart hilarious. They had unusual childhoods, and as adults they have all gone on to make their own place in the world; no easy thing in a world which I feel is increasingly hostile to younger generations. I am so extremely proud of the three of them; they are my inspiration.
Fairy lights, 2022, oil on linen, 50 x 60cm. © Helen Blake.
Henry: What do you think of when you paint?
Helen: Initially, when I start, my mind is teeming with thoughts, I have to bat them away like flies, but as I paint, gradually that all fades into the background and I’m left being only conscious of the brush and where it’s going next. My ‘painting’ thinking goes on when I am not actually painting. I spend a long time looking and thinking about what’s already on the canvas. The next stage, the next layer, is always a response to what’s happened so far, never to anything external.
Henry: What is your idea of happiness?
Helen: Floating in the sea or an outdoor pool staring up at the sky (maybe that is more blissfulness than happiness). Or else walking into my studio, ready for another day of painting. Or sitting in the garden with a cup of coffee listening to the birds. Or spending time with my loved ones. Simple things, but things that make life worth living.
Hestia, 2021, oil on linen, 60 x 50cm. Private Collection. © Helen Blake.
Henry: What is your motto?
Helen: I try to steer a middle course between ‘Never give up’ and ‘Let it go’. I tend to veer towards dogged perseverance, but sometimes you just have to know when to stop. Also, ‘Things will seem a bit better in the morning’. A good one to remember on gloomy evenings if things are difficult.
Henry: What is a layer?
Helen: Where two layers meet is where the magic happens, or where the science happens. My brother is a physicist, working in the field of thin film deposition, superconductivity and magnetism. We have had many conversations about what happens when one layer meets another. In my case it is where a layer of one colour meets another and they interact visually, sometimes in very unexpected ways; in nano physics it is where a film of atoms of one material is laid down on a film of a different material, sometimes creating, where the layers meet, properties which are different from both of the ‘parent’ materials’ properties.
Henry: If you had to start over, what would change?
Helen: After both my parents had died, while clearing the house I found all my school reports. The report for me, age 5, begins, “Helen is very interested in writing, drawing and colouring. Her pictures are thoughtfully planned and carried out with careful attention to detail. She gains real pleasure from pattern making…” I was amazed, and amused to realise that now I’m in my 60s, and after an eventful life, I have come full circle back to what fascinated me as a five-year old.
Henry: What’s your favourite colour? Why?
Helen: I am often asked this question. I don’t have a favourite colour, to me that is like asking a composer or musician, what is your favourite note? I do definitely have favourite colour combinations (which I suppose musically would equate to favourite chords), and these vary over time – at the moment I am very keen on Indian Red with pale lavender blue, and for a three-note chord, I would add a warm, slightly earthy soft green.
Once, years ago, I was stuck in traffic and my eye was caught by someone walking along the footpath who had faded turquoise blue hair, a beautiful pale greyish turquoise. They were wearing bright orangey-red Beats head-phones, the colour of tomato soup and I have never forgotten that juxtaposition of soft faded turquoise-grey and shiny orange-red. I haven’t so far managed to work that combination into a painting, but it’s often at the back of my mind. I also love any combination of pink and yellow, whether that is deep rosy pink and pale lemon, or soft pale pink and strong mustard.
It's the often unexpected colour interactions within a painting which really interest me. I once made a painting where a tiny piece of mint green from one layer was bordered on one side by a small area of powerful yellow ochre from an upper layer. It wasn’t planned, my work is mostly process-driven in the making of it. Mint green and yellow ochre is a horrendous colour combination, but the jarring interaction between those two colours in that tiny patch just gave the painting what it needed to make it work for me.
On a sun-starred hillside, 2025, oil on linen, 30 x 24cm. Private Collection. © Helen Blake.
Henry: Finish this sentence: “Love is…”
Helen: Three little words are guaranteed to melt my heart every time – “Cup of tea?” So, love is the little gestures that show care and thoughtfulness for another person.
Henry: What keeps you awake at night?
Helen: Worrying about what the future holds for my children and grandchildren. The world seems to be moving with horrifying speed towards extreme right-wing politics and total climate breakdown. And the ever-increasing gulf between the mega-rich and the rest of us is truly obscene. I particularly worry about what kind of society my grand-daughters will grow up to experience. The rights which we and our mothers and grandmothers fought for and achieved can so easily be taken away, as we can see happening now. I worry about them all.
Henry: If you could tell your younger self anything, what would it be?
Helen: I wish I could tell my younger self something which would stop her being so anxious. Other than that, I would like to tell my younger self to be true to herself. It’s fine to be yourself, it won’t make people like you any more or any less, and it’s a lot less effort.
Henry: What is your most treasured possession?
Helen: I have many; I am one of those people for whom every object has a past or a story, which the object reminds me of. Here are three…
…a beautiful smooth black stone which my parents picked up on the beach in Cornwall while on their honeymoon; it lived on the mantlepiece all their married life, and when both parents were gone it came to live with me. It fits nicely in the palm of my hand.
…a large book which was printed in Paris in 1536, which belonged to my father. It is a volume of the plays of the Roman playwright Terence, in Latin, so I can’t read it. Its pages have little black scorch marks dotted about in places – it has been studied by candle light – and there are a few handwritten notes in the margins, in a style of handwriting from hundreds of years ago, and minutely written with, presumably, a quill. I often just pick it up and hold it to get that feeling of touching the past. I call it my time-traveling book.
…a small cream coloured round clay pot, a very humble, yet beautiful object, given to me by my son. It’s described as a ‘glazed three-legged compressed belly brush-washer, China, Tang Dynasty (618 – 907AD)’. Again, it’s a time traveller, and holding it I have a physical connection to whoever who used it over a thousand years ago, rinsing their brushes after painting and writing.
The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear, 2023, oil on linen, 30 x 24cm. Private Collection. © Helen Blake.
Henry: What is your madeleine de Proust?*
*(a common expression in France referring to a smell, taste or sound which dredges up a long-lost memory).
Helen: Oregano. As a teenager, my family and I went a number of times to spend a summer holiday in Greece. My mother’s best friend from university was Greek, and my father was a classicist, so we used to divide our time there between staying with my mother’s friend’s family, and visiting archaeological sites. I remember there being wild oregano everywhere. Oregano reminds me of the heat and the dry scratchiness of the land.
And you haven’t asked it specifically, but it particularly conjures up one of my most beautiful and treasured memories. In the late 70s, while touring the Peloponnese, we decided to go to the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, which my father was particularly keen to see. We arrived late afternoon, after a horrendous drive (the usual terrifying hairpin bends of the mountains in the Peloponnese, but also a road so deeply pot-holed and difficult to negotiate that we nearly turned back, worrying about damage to our hire car). When we finally arrived, only one other car was parked there, but after a little while those people left, and we had the whole of that site to ourselves; I don’t remember any caretaker or other human presence. The location is stunning. As the UNESCO World Heritage Site List describes it, “This famous temple to the god of healing and the sun was built towards the middle of the 5th century B.C. in the lonely heights of the Arcadian mountains.” I remember a golden late afternoon far up in the mountains, wandering around the temple, which is every bit as spectacular as the Parthenon, just ourselves and the warm wind. The entire structure was covered with a protective tent in 1987, which still remains, so visitors today can visit the temple, but not with the breath-taking view of the landscape as its backdrop. I feel incredibly lucky to have this memory.
Henry: What is one of the hardest lessons you have had to learn?
Helen: I can’t fix everything.
HELEN BLAKE grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and graduated with an honours degree in Visual Art from Aberystwyth University, Wales. She lives and works in County Wicklow, Ireland. She was runner-up for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2022.
Other awards include the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary Award; The Model Cara Award, Sligo; County Wicklow Visual Arts Open, Overall Winner, Mermaid Art Centre, Bray, adjudicated by Patrick T Murphy, Director, RHA.
Eleven solo exhibitions to date include Molesworth Gallery, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Limerick Museum; Mermaid Art Centre, Bray; FUTURES14, RHA, Dublin.
Her paintings been shown in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including in the RHA Dublin and RA London Annual Exhibitions.
She is represented by Molesworth Gallery, Dublin and Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast.