Helen Moore

"After finishing my Fine Art degree at Bradford Art College I spent much of the next couple of years travelling, before eventually ending up in Caithness in Northern Scotland. My travels had taken me across Canada and parts of the U.S by bus and it is the wide flat open spaces that have stuck with me and inspired my work. This theme has continued in my more recent work and the open spaces and huge changing skies of Caithness and the North of Scotland tend to be a constant in my paintings.

"As a landscape artist my intention is to paint the reality of the landscape I see around me. The art work often starts as a drawing, using a mixture of charcoal, pencil and oil paint to work out the composition. Although these act as studies to the finished painting, the drawings often evolve into pieces of their own.
 
"Thin layers of oil paint are built up on canvas to create the smoothness of these empty spaces and subtleties of light. Broken fences, industrial machinery, buildings and other man-made structures tend to be in the focus of my work, the empty space, vast sky or endless flat landscape beyond giving a back drop to the reality of everyday life. Figures rarely appear in my work; however, there is evidence of life and activity,creating a slight mystery - the painting acting as a kind of stage set moments before or moments just after an act has taken place."