40 x 40 cm | 15 x 15 in
Subject: People
Tags:
Children,
Isolation,
Horizon,
Community,
Attachment,
Neutral Palette
Original painting in oil on board.
"Children's figures randomly placed to create a 2D pattern on the canvas, but they take on narrative since they are human and we are hard-wired to empathise. We super-impose our own memories and feelings of inclusion or exclusion, as children our emotions are raw and pure."
It’s the double lens of Helen Latham’s work that makes it extraordinary.
She’s not just painting children or painting as a child might. She’s doing something far more rare: she’s inhabiting the inner world of childhood from within, and then rendering it with the full consciousness, technique, and sophistication of an adult artist.
The paintings don’t just show a child’s world - they are a child’s world, felt from the inside. Embodied, luminous, tactile, real.
They don’t illustrate - they remember. But not as an adult recalling the past. As if the past itself is still living, breathing, and available through the skin.
Helen has just joined the Masters section. That feels exactly right.