Mixed media on colored recycled paper
16 ½ ” h x 11 ¾ ” w
Mixed media on board
20” h x 16” w
Mixed media on board
20” h x 16” w
Mixed media on colored recycled paper
16 ½” h x 11 ¾” w
Mixed media on colored recycled paper
16 ½ ” h x 11 ¾ ” w
Artist Statement
In the tradition of artist as shaman, healer and educator, I use my art and teaching abilities to encourage women to claim their age as a time of heightened creativity and spiritual growth. My work serves as a catalyst for others to explore the issues I raise, and for women to communicate their knowledge with one another. I have presented my work in diverse forums such as universities, health, community and fine arts centers as well as home and studio gatherings.
For over six decades, my work has centered on life passages—including pregnancy, mothering, illness, healing, the death of a child—and on various stages of my children’s growth. I have focused in recent years on exploring women’s journey through menopause and old age and contradicting the negativity provoked by aging in a sexist and youth-oriented culture.
While I carry female-centered imagery forward from the 1960s, the mind/ body practices of yoga, qi-gong and meditation are also part of my art-making process. Trying to find stillness and equilibrium in time of plague, I also want to capture the surreal, off kilter feel of NOW. My Buddhist explorations embody “being” and “doing” with humor, awe and connectivity.
Elements of nature flow through and interact with the colorful patterning—even the airborne Corona Virus presents itself! I am currently mix-mashing Buddhas, Yoginis, Taras and Durgas (sources from ancient Buddhist sculpture and Thangka paintings) with pop and gaming culture, magazine design and advertising, feminist and multi-cultural art history.
Education
1963 MFA University of Colorado, Boulder
1960 BA University of Miami, FL
Bio
Helen Redman, MFA, is a widely exhibited figurative painter, teacher, feminist commentator and grandmother who shares her art in the context of life issues. She has taught at the University of Colorado and the University of Iowa and has lectured and exhibited her art across the United States. She has been an active force for gaining support and recognition for women in the arts, co-founding Front Range Women in the Visual Arts in Boulder, Colorado in the 1970s and serving as the first president of the San Diego Women’s Caucus for Art in the 1990s.
Redman has exhibited her work widely in solo and group exhibitions in the United States from the 1960s to the present. Her work is also included in selected collections such as the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Women’s Museum of California, University of Colorado Fine Arts Department and Bryn Mawr College special collections.
Her awards include an Honor Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, Women’s Caucus for Art, San Diego, inclusion in the Brooklyn Museum’s Feminist Art Base and purchase awards by the Ford Foundation and the Barbara Davies Institute for Childhood Diabetes in Denver, CO.
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