Appreciating the power of silence, the “Shifting Landscapes” series began as a series of drawings, almost fifty in fact, while immersed in the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountain landscape in the last days of winter this year, 2011, during a residency at the Hambidge Center. When I returned to my own studio, the drawings became a catalyst for the continuing series of encaustic paintings begun several years ago..
With admiration for the dignity of the landscape and particularly the trees, this series became a journey and renewal of the spirit, being in close observation not only of the physical landscape but also the wind and the special qualities of the light in late winter and the sudden mountain rains.
The color palette was derived from the almost watery blue tint I saw in the birch bark along the paths outside the studio along with the rusty siennas and grays, and the greens of the pines pierced with a scattering of golds. The temporal quality of the mages became important to me, often using line and a strong vertical or horizontal composition to portray that quality. I like to think that most of the paintings were executed in a kind of memory trance, a meditation on the passage of time.
A strong component of these paintings is my continuing interest in the alternating themes of strength and fragility.
Ms. DeRamus is a member of the Fulton County Artists Registry in painting and photography. She is listed in the Registry of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Women Artists Archive Special Collection at Sonoma State University. In 2011 Helen received a residency at Hambidge.
Helen's work is in corporate, private, and public collections throughout the United States. The collections include: Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, Georgia Perimeter College, North Georgia College and State University, The ART Station, the Ben Hill-Fitzgerald County Library, the Women's Center at Kennestone Hospital, the Atlanta Women's Foundation in Atlanta, Georgia, and Livingston College at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Helen is represented exclusively in the Metro Atlanta area by dk Gallery in Marietta, Georgia, and in Alabama by Griffith Gallery.
She earned a B.A. degree in art history and history from Emory University then completed further studies at North Carolina State University, the Southeastern Center for Photographic Arts, with New York art director and photographer the late Art Kane, and with Gerald Samuels at the Art Center of Northern New Jersey and the New School. She also studied with Joseph Perrin internationally known for his color field paintings and Emeritus Head Professor of the Visual Arts Department of Georgia State University.
Helen's studio is located in the Artisan Resource Center in Marietta, Georgia. She mentors private art students of all ages and conducts art workshops and demonstrations of the encaustic painting technique.
