Helen Caswell  (1923-        )
California Artist

Grasshopper
Acrylic and Oil, Layered on Canvas
24" x 18"
Wood frame:  28" x 22"

Boy studying a grasshopper.
Painting is in excellent condition.

About the Artist:
Helen Caswell is best known for her paintings of children, but she is interested in many facets of life. She says: "My first concern in painting is the recording of an instant when several lives may touch briefly, or when one soul is suspended in a private world. A lonely old man, two lovers, a child roller skating-all may be sharing one sunny half-hour in autumn, or a rainy day in April. It is a moment that happens and then is gone. I look for the pattern of it, the movement and interaction of people with each other and the environment. Especially I look for the uniqueness of each person, for I am primarily a portrait painter."

Approximately a quarter of her work is commissioned. Commissions might be of a boy and his dog, a young woman and her horse, or a man in a business suit, destined for the wall of a boardroom. Sometimes the subject is a place, rather than a person, as in the "portrait" of a beautiful and historic Sonoma County farm.

The children in Caswell's paintings never seem to be surprised to see their fantasies appear in the pictures: the sandcastle they are building becomes a "real" castle in the background, fairies and dragons are imprisoned in the soap-bubbles they are blowing, squirrels and raccoons show up, as well as other fabulous creatures.

There are some places she likes to paint again and again because they are always different, such as the seashore, vineyards and redwood groves, and she is influenced by the sunny California climate to the extent that she often sidesteps the real-life colors for a palette of yellows and golds. She is not a plein aire painter. She says: "I love to explore the countryside, at home or abroad, but when it comes to getting it on canvas, I prefer my studio. Working on the spot confuses me. There is too much to see. For me, it is better to work from my memory of the feeling of the place, with photographs to refer to, not copy."

She does not usually make preliminary sketches. Instead, she takes several dozen photographs of her subject, sometimes traveling across the continent to do so. Children, with rare exceptions, do not sit, and if they do, they look miserable. Adults are even more difficult. As people grow older, they tend to mask their feelings and project a protective image. What Caswell looks for is what she calls the essential expression-the likeness-and she finds that she can capture it with a high-speed lens better than she can with hours of posing. And she is not so much interested in how people look to strangers as she is in how they look to those who know and love them. She starts with a charcoal sketch, directly on the canvas. The first drawing, she finds, has a spontaneity that loses something in translation or transference. This first drawing is minimal, with no shading and little detail, but she sometimes works more hours on it that on all the painting that follows.

When she is satisfied with the drawing, she goes over it with a small sable brush with a warm tone in acrylic. When this is dry, she wipes the canvas clean of charcoal residue and sponges on a deep tone of acrylic, which sets the color mood of the painting, and is consistent with her preference for a limited palette. Next comes a color sketch in either acrylic or oil, and after that a layer of opaque oil colors applied with a palette knife, followed by layers of oil glazes.

She went back to school in her fifties to learn printmaking, and has her own press, on which she enjoys printing her stone lithographs. More recently she began working in watercolor, doing mainly landscapes and botanicals. Her first love, however, remains working in oils.

In addition to her artistic talents, she is an established writer with over thirty books published, including twenty-two books written and illustrated for Abingdon Press, one for Broadman Holman, two for Thomas Nelson, one for Loyola, and a Doubleday Crime Club Selection. Some of these books are now out of print, but are available on the web. Literary awards include the James D. Phelan Award for Narrative Poetry, The San Francisco Browning Society Award for Narrative Poetry, the Roberts Writing Award, and a number of smaller poetry prizes.

She has taught privately, has led workshops in both painting and writing, and has been Artist in Residence at the Franciscan Life Process Center in Michigan on four separate occasions, and also at the Foundation for Biblical Research in New Hampshire.

She has done Murals for St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco, Saratoga Federated Church, Villa Sienna in Mountain View, and St. Elizabeth Seton School in Palo Alto, (all in California). She recently designed a stained glass window for the Methodist Church in Sebastopol, California. She has also painted murals for hospitals and private homes. Her works are in private collections throughout the United States and Canada.

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Category:  Figurative, Children, Portrait

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