Praeterita

  Phthalo + quinacridone + azo 1.4.16 , watercolor on paper, 75 cm x 53 cm. Part 38 of an interview series in which artists reply to the same six questions. Helen Reynolds is a New Zealand artist whose work in many media explores systems, layers, and translucency. Her recent watercolour pieces push the boundaries of what we normally expect of that medium, often emerging as large-scale abstract pieces that focus on a single gesture carried as far as it can go. Her website is here . Other interviews on this blog are available here . Philip Hartigan : What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why? Helen Reynolds : I’ve been working almost entirely in watercolour for five years now. Watercolour is translucent, treacherous and delicate - I love it. I started using watercolours when my daughter was quite ill and I was spending most of my day looking after her. Watercolour fits into women’s lives when those lives are constrained to the domestic. You can put watercolour down quickly, it doesn’

  A few weeks ago I was invited onto The Art Biz podcast to talk to host Alyson Stanfield about my past and current work as an artist and an art writer. We talked about this blog, too, and how I started it in 2009, posted almost daily for a few years, and then leveraged the blog into paid writing assignments for art magazines. Here is the link to the page . The podcast recording is about halfway down the page.