"It is like an alternative to her diary to her. She draws what she lives and what she dreams of..."
Helena Buckinx (°1970, in Schoten near Antwerp) makes her first
painting at the age of 16 on a summer holiday. With some old gouache
paint and brushes, which belonged to her mother, she makes this painting
on canvas. From then onwards she paints during every school holiday. It
is like an alternative to her diary to her. She draws what she lives
and what she dreams of...
After two years she gets a set of oil colours from her father.
This is the real start. Genuine, vivid colours that are there to last on
the canvas unlike the gouache that fades away after a couple of years.
Through the use of oil colours, Helena's love for true colours is even more characterized in her art work.
Her paintings show a set of naïve-painted figures in an almost
surreal world. A world where the sky is too blue and the grass too green
to be true. It's her dream world. The change of gouache to oil does not
influence the main subjects. Her paintings are still like a diary to
her. One might recognize her in the main character of her paintings.
However these are not to be considered as a set of self portraits, but
as portrait of her feelings. In her native language, Dutch, she refers
to it as 'gevoelsportretten' as opposed to 'zelfportretten'.
Next to the figurative paintings, Helena also goes abstract from
time to time. Although she considers this work much less personal than
her figurative work, she also enjoys to work with colours only. Colours
rule!
"When I paint, I do not need to see the image in front of me. It
is all in my head and in my heart. What I do need while I paint, is to
be in the right mood. And good mood equals good music!
My taste in music is quite eclectic. I've been a Johnny Cash,
Beatles and ABBA fan for as long as I can remember. And either they or
Wings, Tindersticks, Oasis, Boudewijn de Groot, Peter Gabriel, Simon and
Garfunkel, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Denny Laine, Leonard Cohen,
Franz Ferdinand, ... are my companions through my work.
Sometimes a certain song can inspire me for a new painting. Like
the beautiful Dutch song, 'Pastorale' by Liesbeth List and Ramses
Shaffy, which talks about the impossible love of a woman for the mighty
sun."
