Helen Pandey
My work combines painting and drawing to give a glimpse of my experience living in Hawaii for six months during the Coronavirus pandemic. I chose to focus on Hawaii because my experiences in that locality caused me to grow and evolve as a person. My body of work consists of a series of studies from one photograph that I made on the island of Oahu and that I especially cherished. My goal is to immortalize the dream-like qualities of my life at that time as well as the landscape of Oahu.
My work has borrowed methods from the 19th century Impressionist art movement. Having been especially inspired by the paintings of Peter Rostovsky, Debra Bermingham, and Maurice Prendergast I have tried to incorporate some of their techniques in my own work. I have incorporated Peter Rostovsky’s faint skylines. The lack of contrast forces the viewer to almost stare at the painting. Debra Bermingham has inspired me with her wonderful texture and use of color. Her paintings have informed the use of some of my textures. Maurice Prendergast’s brush strokes and spacing of lines has had an impression on my works as well.
With my use of color and texture, I aspire to influence the emotions of the viewer. As color plays an important role in the interpretation of visual imagery, I like for each of my pieces to represent a feeling I had while living in Hawaii. I also emphasize texture and use techniques, like dripping paint, to represent the fading of memory. In all my work I am composing studies that vary the use of techniques, colors, and textures, as I aim to create different versions of a Hawaiian landscape that evoke a certain emotion.