Patterns in Repeat With Artist Helen Booth

Home for artist Helen Booth is a nineteenth-century woollen mill in west Wales, so it seems fitting that when we speak over zoom, hanging on the wall in the background is a painting she made six years ago when her gran – who taught her how to knit – passed away. “She was that make do and mend generation. We used to buy sweaters from jumble sales and unravel them, then I would crochet the wool into ponchos to sell at school,” Helen recalls. “That painting was the idea of working with warp and weft, and how certain memories are clear and tight while others are loose and fibrous. Some of the lines are close together and others are holey.”

Since Helen began her career 35 years ago (she studied at Wimbledon School of Art and initially worked on film and television sets before painting full time), she has always imbued her work with a deeper sense of meaning. “I’m interested in nature and our place in the world. People often buy my paintings in memory of others because they feel like they have a spiritual connection, which is wonderful. I want to offer stillness and an antidote to the chaos around us.” Over the years, her style has evolved and distilled. Tree trunks became lines. Branches turned into dots. “Having a dot by itself on a page shows so much promise; the promise of something becoming bigger and more informed,” she explains. “The dot to me is metaphysical and that’s what I’m trying to capture in my work: the unknown. I like to call it the thin space.”

She often begins by stretching large scale canvases (typically 3m x 2m, which are later split into four) against a wall outside and uses all kinds of equipment – mops, large brushes, squeegees, spiky seed heads from purple alliums – to apply the first layers of paint. “I’m not precious at that stage; I love making marks with anything I can find,” she says. “I respect oil paint because it has its own life, and gravity means I’m not in control. I love that bit: going a little bonkers in the garden.” In contrast, when the canvases are brought inside to her studio in the mill’s former dye room, those marks evolve intricate and repeating patterns. “Each mark might be 3mm so they take a long time but it's the rhythm of the process that I find fascinating. I like the discipline that’s involved, the repetition clicking into something that feels bigger than myself.” By the end, each painting has 50 to 60 layers.

The scale, says Helen, is important. “If you’re standing in front of a large painting, you’re almost surrounded by it; I see it as somewhere to meditate and be quiet. When I make very tiny works, someone’s gaze has to be focused so it’s the same feeling.” While she isn’t afraid of size, she is wary of colour (blue and white is her most favoured combination). “My work at the start is usually quite bright but by the end it’s muted. Otherwise, it would become more about that than the atmosphere. I can create more calm by keeping my palette monochrome. That’s why I like the Welsh light: it’s very grey and flattens everything, especially in winter.”

She discovered a similar light in Iceland, where she did an artists’ residency in 2020 – a pivotal moment in her practice. “I love it. I’ve been five times now. The landscape is so enormous and transient. I remember one night I was outside looking up at the stars. The snow was falling towards me and it felt like space had flattened and time had stopped. It’s not so much specific elements of the landscape I wanted to capture from the residency but the feeling of being there.” She arrived with around 60 ply panels, already primed with gesso. “I would go outside with pre-made inks and watery oils to make quick marks before everything froze, and throw the canvases onto the black sand. I like that kind of temporary, performative practice.”

Right now, she is embarking on a new series of large paintings and, as always, is tackling more than one at once. “My paintings have conversations with each other: if one has an interesting pattern, I might move it across to another. Because I work on similar ideas – questioning the unknown, the thin space – it’s ongoing, a continuum.” With that, she heads off to Penbryn Beach with her canvases to start experimenting in the sand.

Helen wears the TOAST Garment Dyed Linen Barrel Leg Trousers, Garment Dyed Cotton Linen Jacket and Garment Dyed Linen Oversized Shirt.

Words by Emma Love.

Photography by Leia Morrison.