Perth Voice Interactive

A PHONE interview with artist Helen Ansell was a tense and anxious affair on my behalf.

The gregarious Geraldton local was anything but difficult, but she was expecting a baby “any minute now”.

“I’m nine days overdue,” she cheerfully told the Voice.

Baby number two and an exhibition at the same time weren’t some weird avant garde plan, but when a space became available at Perth’s FORM Gallery hot on the heels of a Port Hedland opening that attracted 500, she jumped at it as fast as her baby belly would let her.

“At the time I thought the baby would be two weeks old and everything would have been alright,” she says.

Ansell isn’t sure now she’ll even make her own opening, but taking things in her stride is second nature to the self-taught artist.

She began painting for “fun” while ex-pating in Scotland but in a short time had under her belt three solo and five group exhibitions.

“Like a lot of people I never thought it would be my main occupation—but I had a house full of paintings.”

Her art is inspired by the wildflowers and rugged beauty of her father’s Wiluna station in WA’s remote north-east, where she grew up: “It was half sheep station and half Aboriginal community.”

She learnt the local Martu language, often visiting country with older women, and remembers being with groups of kids “blanketed” by a sea of wildflowers that stretched to the horizon.

“There are things you take for granted growing up but as an adult they are amazing.”

Returning home after three years she worked on her dad’s station: “From Edinburgh and the art centre of the world to an Aboriginal community of 30 people…dad didn’t even have internet,” she laughs.

The world she grew up in continues to inspire Ansell’s work, as she strives for a new interpretation of nature, with design-driven work depicting wildflowers, birds and plants.

“I’m interested in how a small ordinary flower is blown up to be larger than life, each colour is dramatised, each shape simplified.”

Ansell and business partner Peta Riley branched into textile for this latest exhibition, Beyond the Fence Line, with cushions, tea towels and rolls of fabric, hand-designed from Ansell’s work.

“We wanted it to be Australian without being Australiana.”

Beyond the Fence Line is on until at FORM Gallery, Murray Street, Perth Mon–Friday 9am to 5pm, and Saturday from 10am, until August 16.

by JENNY D’ANGER