Helen Edwards is an Oxford based Artist and Integrative Arts Psychotherapist. She works in visual media and movement. Her work portrays early developmental forces from conception into life, individuation and the gaining of consciousness.
Helen Edwards has danced, drawn and painted all her life. From childhood in the North of England, she has continued to explore and portray the resonances of body and land. She has swum in rivers, seas and lakes for many years, studied Butoh dance in Japan and since around 2005 has felt inspired to connect to nature through Amerta movement.
As artist and arts psychotherapist she has developed community arts work over the last 20 years, including creative arts projects for children with communication difficulties, linking schools and museums in Oxford. She has curated many international exhibitions.
Touching Movements
Touching Movements traces expression and form of the human hand underwater as reflected in the undersurface of the water membrane in winter, coupled with images of the undersurface in the same water body of water in summer.
Do your hands move when you are dreaming?
I am interested in the nature of hand movements as an instrument of communication. Gesture seems to be as much for our own sake to embody our communications with words as well as for the sake of others in seeing. The words within and around us encompass our bodies as well as our minds. Gesture is shaped by environment and even the planes of motion involved in gesticulation suggest a kind of script. The use of tools can bring further association between feeling, gesture and emerging story of life. Freed up from locomotion hands may find unprecedented uses, grounding and focusing the body in new ways.
Lifestream Transitions explores landscapes of birth.
Acrylic painting on canvas
Underwater Dreams
In water does the human hand dream of being in the womb?
The conversation between the mothers mind and body with that of her infant is a crucial opportunity for the developing mind, body and spirit of both the infant and mother. These unconscious and conscious conversations continue through the profound transition from being in the womb to the infant living outside the mother’s body throughout life. Essential to the development and communication of the origins of an innate sense of love and relatedness these conversations are central to 1001 Critical Days Manifesto. Support, understanding and confidence is needed in the parents capacity to offer sensitive, appropriate and responsive care to their infants and needs to be nurtured by family, statutory and specialist service support.
Contact
07947 546133
hels19@hotmail.com
IG: www.instagram.com/artallotment
