About me
Born in Kent, now based in London, Hele Groom-Shorter is a large-scale oil painter. Her work is abstract at first glance, but a closer look draws the eye to figures emerging from the milieu. After graduating with a BA in History of Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, Hele immediately submerged herself in her physical art practice. Throughout her Fine Art MA at The University of East London, she has drawn upon her deep well of theoretical academic training, enabling a richer texture to her growing corpus of work, and she looks forward to developing this knowledge through her studies at The Warburg Institute this year in her master’s course in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture in collaboration with The National Gallery, London.
STUCK BETWEEN
“I have spent this year unlearning what I have been conditioned to recognise as valid art. This is where I felt stuck between. With my brush, I have worked through what it means to make a ‘good’* painting. Many lessons learned, art experienced and studio sessions later, I began to disrupt painting and my thoughts of it to create work I imagined. I paint what I see, whether that is an image from myth or recounting a memory that I experienced. I do this with a range of bright colours, often reducing the palette down to red, creamy yellow and purple.”
* ultimately whatever the hell you think it is