ABOUT THE ARTIST
Helene Steene’s work is well recognized for its many layered depth, intensity of colors, and elegance of surface. She combines classical oil glaze techniques, using natural minerals, over marble dust, with contemporary brushed metal on wood, as well as oil glazes and marble dust over collaged paper.
She received part of her art education from George Washington University in Washington DC, and in 2004 a Master of Fine Arts from University of Kentucky.
Her work has been published, exhibited, and collected in both private and public collections in the United States, France, Greece, Spain, Great Britain and Sweden, and she has won numerous awards for her work. Her works have also been shown in three solo museum exhibits and recent large-scale commissions are placed at a Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, as well as several at the University of Kentucky.
Helene Steene has a studio at the Lexington Art League, in the Loudon House, where her paintings are created with textures and numerous layers of information built up through additions and subtractions over a long period of time. She uses natural minerals in dry powder form in oil glazes, as well as acrylic, charcoal, sand, marble dust and metal on wood panels. Using wood panels allows for both small and largescale pieces.
Many of her works are inspired by the soft white walls, and weathered wood works she encounters on the Greek island of Paros, as well as the local fauna and the ever-changing sea. The sense of layered history from antiquity to more recent times is very present on this island, famous for its white translucent marble, which inspired Steene to experiment with marble dust to create a sense of contemporary fresco surfaces. Many other of her paintings include Ginkgo leaves as they represent nature from ancient to present times as well as the concept of healing. She also has been working on a series of circular forms, representing a sense of centeredness which always has been important to her.
