helen merrin

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I love MAKING images. 

 

I love earning the image.

 

I love a sawdust patina on my hands. I love sweet, boiled linseed in my nose. I love rolling a buttery kiss of ink. I love slicing card and chopping paper. I love sticking a thousand wooden shapes. I love the long way round. I love work.

 

I’ve a degree and an MA in Printmaking, a postgraduate diploma in Theatre Design and an MA in Children's Book Illustration. I’ve studied pattern cutting, tailoring, garment manufacture and feltmaking. I’ve designed for dance in Finland, carved snow in Russia and shown prints in London. I’ve spent more than three decades teaching in further, higher and postgraduate education and am grateful to all the students and colleagues who have shared those years and filled my heart.

 

I’m featured in The Fible 3 (fidaworldwide), Fashion Fictions (A. Twigger-Holroyd), An Engraver’s Globe (S.Brett), Making and Drawing (K.Cane) and Children's Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling (M.Salisbury + M.Styles). I’ve won awards from the Arts Council, the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, the Djanogly Award and NottDance. I have been selected as one of the Top100 Fashion Portrait Artists by fidaworldwide and shortlisted for the Worldwide Fashion Illustration and Drawing Award in the Portrait category, Highly Commended at the Cheltenham Illustration Awards twice and shortlisted for The Pushkin Press Illustration Award. I am published by David Fickling Books, Edinburgh University Press, University of Bamberg Press, fidaworldwide and Bloomsbury.

 

I am having the time of my life.