• “Prairie Fire II”

  "Prairie Fire II", Original Watercolor Painting, 30 x 40

artist bio

Helen Klebesadel (MFA) maintains her art studio in Madison, Wisconsin.  She has exhibited her richly detailed watercolors nationally and internationally for three decades. Her paintings are in many private and public collections. Helen’s paintings address woman-centered and environmental themes. She starts with detailed drawings and develops the images with layer upon layer of color washes and dry brush technique mixed with occasional areas of wet-into-wet spontaneity. She regularly offers workshops on art and creativity, which can be found at CreativityLessons.com.
Her art can be seen at http://klebesadel.com

artist statement

My visual concerns run the gamut from careful study to poetic, symbolic and sometimes political representations of nature and human nature. My watercolors push the traditional boundaries of the medium in scale, content, and technique. Ranging in size from the intimate to the monumental, my paintings are transparent watercolors on paper and canvas. I usually start with detailed drawings and developing the images with layer upon layer of color washes and dry brush technique mixed with occasional areas of wet-into-wet spontaneity, or I am guided by chance, starting with the accidental textures and chance mixtures of a wet-into-wet base. In either case I build and develop the content of the individual works while working in series on a theme. Most often I paint subjects associated with nature, environmental change, or topics associated with the place of women and their creative work in this culture. Two collaborative art projects include The Fowers Are Burning (TheFlowersAreBurning.com), and two person collaborative focused on concerns around climate change; and The Exquisite Uterus Social Justice Project (ExquisitUterus.com), a two-person collaborative with over 200 participants addressing women's reprodiutive rights.