Helen Steele is an artist/teacher who works in different techniques such as acrylics, printmaking, oil and encaustics. Her work is not about the human figure, an exploitation of the body, more so an exploration into the human soul, a witnessing of the human spirit. Her approach is intuitive, suggesting rather than detailing.

My compositions are never preconceived, yet my themes are recurrent: The use of the figure as the means of investigating various psychological states: harmony, serenity, anxiety, isolation…As I work and rework my canvas the image appears, sometimes only to elude me then to reassert itself much later. I work in multiple layers with buried images and words. Paint is wiped off and layers are peeled yielding the emerging image. Symbolic markings, personal imagery, shapes and words appear, questions arise. Intimacy is translated through the sensuality of line, the simplest and subtlest of my tools. The line can be bold and assertive or sublime and quite sensual, converging dimensions, movement and emotion. The connecting thread is the tension between what is active and passive, be it physical, emotional or psychological.