Helena Heinrihsone

Helena Heinrihsone (1948)

Everything Helena Heinrihsone paints can be characterised as her diary. Every work is a particular event or an emotional experience from the painter’s life. Helena Heinrihsone’s art is about Helena herself, but it is not closed for the viewer. It is in her power to paint deeply personal and be able to do it without personal boundaries, where her own experienced joys and pleasures become the viewer’s individual adventures and feelings.
For several years now, nature has taken up an important role in Helena Heinrihsone’s creative work and it serves as a personification of a conflict between man’s emotions and mind. In the five paintings of the new exhibition the main motif is a fusion of man and nature in one, as well. The expression of a landscape serves to detect the human relations. Calmness alternates with anxiety, tenderness with roughness. (Mg.Art. Ilze Zeivate, Maksla XO gallery.)

“I do not dare to write, but with colour I can do anything. Zoom in or zoom out – I always think, while I pain. I rely on my own experience, because I don’t understand, how one can draw inspiration for oneself from others’ revelations. In this sense, I pity myself a bit, this year especially, when everybody talks about Rainis and Aspazija. I would like to draw my inspiration from them, but most likely I won’t get to them in this life,” Helena Heinrihsone.

Above all the diverse roles Helena Heinrihsone is playing the one and most significant part – the role of a genuine artist. With everything that the audience expects with applause. In her paintings the beautiful embraces the ugly. One can trust her taste although combinations of colours cannot be called “tasteful”. Her works decorate interiors but they are not part of them. Helena may be extravagant but never permits herself any vulgarity. Her parties are legendary but the paintings are created in the silence of the morning.
Heinrihsone is in principle an idealist of painting.  Her world is ruled by talent, imagination, emotions and contemplation and a belief that it all has a place in today’s world. Helena Heinrihsone is not going to die as an author to be resurrected like a pile of interpretations, it seems, that she hopes to remain her own self. (Vilnis Vejs, Art Critic.)