Start the Year with Collage! VGPL’s Winter Art Exhibit: Helen Becker

Helen Becker’s beautiful collage art is guaranteed to chase away the winter blues. Her exhibit will be on the walls of VGPL from January 2 through February. A 2023 winner of the National Collage Society’s annual exhibit award, Becker describes her work as “collage-painting. “I have always felt when collaging that I am painting with a multitude of textured and patterned papers and other materials such as fabric, string, or foil.” She uses a blending, collage technique with tissue paper, often applying colorful, fluid acrylic paints on rice paper, tearing or cutting materials to glue to a surface. “When glue is applied to tissue paper of any color it becomes translucent, allowing color to partly show through.”

Both her collage paintings and charcoal-and-white artwork cater reflect her
interest in shading and shadows. In her study of the effect of light on objects
and surfaces, Becker read classic texts on light including those from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as current now as when they were written, she says. Because of this interest, her work concentrates on still lifes. “The background of still lifes is important because it presents the shadows cast by the object,” she says. “Shadows help in defining form; without shadows, objects appear flat.” For many of her recent still-life collages, Becker uses the inside of security envelopes, which have various patterns (she has identified 35) used to shield the envelope’s contents.

A native of Ohio, Becker and her husband moved west after college, in search of wide-open spaces, settling first in Moab (where she was a founding board member of Gallery Moab and helped direct the Plein Air Moab Competition) before moving to New Mexico two and half years ago.

This year, Becker will take part in the 40th Annual Juried Exhibit at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Her art resides in collections across the United States.