HELEN BEARD

Beard’s paintings use a vivid rainbow palette to create interlocking arrangements of bright primary colour, which combine to describe explicit sexual encounters. Working from found images, Beard’s work explores themes relating to gender, sexual psychology and eroticism. Situated part way between abstraction and representation, her figures are reduced to concisely defined fields of vibrant colour, on which a myriad of varied brush marks remain visible. As a feminist, she is unapologetic for female desire and takes back ownership of sexual imagery from the predominantly male gaze. The work is, at heart, a celebration of the life affirming nature of sex.

In 2017 she was included in the group show Simulation Skin: Selected works from the Murderme Collection and in the Spring of 2018, Beard was included in True Colours, a show of new works by three women artists at Newport Street Gallery, London. Beard’s work was also included in the show 21st Century Women curated by Jane Neal and Fru Tholstrup last Autumn in London.

Her work is in included in major collections worldwide.

She lives and works in Brighton, England.

Text courtesy Reflex Amsterdam.