Helen has given this new exhibition the title “Traveller’s Poise”. “It is this conjunction of movement and stillness that so fascinates me about flowers” she says. “ As a child growing up in Oxford, I went to ballet classes taught by a Miss Christian, in a room above the Catholic Church of Saints Gregory and Augustine in the Woodstock Road. There was always that challenge of trying to balance, hold a position without wobbling, freezing in motion as children try to achieve in Musical Statues. I was never very good at it. The mystery and magic of a flower is the way it can seemingly suspend movement. As petals open, untwist, lean outwards, turn, loosen, change colour, dry, and shrivel, the human onlooker sees this journey in arrested motion, as in the game Grandmother’s Footsteps: you look, you know the players have moved, are going to move, but at that moment they seemingly freeze in mid air, mid journey, thus my title Traveller’s Poise.” In this exhibition the majority of the work is in pastel. “Coloured clay dust on a piece of paper” says Helen. “ It seems to lend itself to the ephemeral nature of of plants, a brush with a sleeve and it is gone, I often need to do that, flowers don't hold their pose for long, the drawing has to change.” Biography: Helen studied art at Banbury College of Art, then at the Royal Academy Schools, London. She regularly shows her work and has had exhibitions in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, Dorset and London, the most significant being Kew Gardens London. Her most recent solo shows have been at Exbury Gardens in the New Forest, and at the Oxford Botanic Gardens in 2015.

Up Skirts and Go, pastel on paper, (46x60cm) by Helen Simpson