BIOGRAPHY

Helen Gaynor (b.1959) is a painter, musician and writer from Wexford. Her creative practice encompasses several art forms, including painting, musical improvisations, collage/mixed media, fiction and poetry. She has also written essays and reviews on art projects. Personal projects have combined painting with poetry, musical responses to colour, a collaborative project with jewellery maker Lina Varna, and a recent publication of her experiences in lockdown combining images, painted, photographic and digital reconstructions, prose and poetry. Gaynor has written a short screenplay, and is compiling a first collection of poetry, while preparing for a large solo show in 2025.

Qualifications include an H Dip in Digital Media Design, IT Carlow (2014), an MA in Creative Writing, UCD (2013) and a BA in Fine Art (Painting) NCAD (1995).

In 2017, Gaynor co-curated with Catherine Bowe And Creatures Dream… A New Language, which looked at the scope of painting by artists with Wexford connections for Wexford Co. Council and Wexford Arts Centre; in 2018 she exhibited at al’Opera, Velletri, Italy; at Kamera8, Wexford, curated by Anya Von Gosseln; and Vital Material, curated by Mary Ruth Walsh.

2020 saw her inclusion in an online exhibition of 19 artists, curated by Valeria Ceregini, with such artists as Damien Flood and Richard Long, to mark the impact of Covid 19 on their work.

Collections in which her work is included are the OPW, EPA, AXA, Boyle Civic Arts Collection, Wexford Vocational College, Co. Wexford Education Centre, Wexford Co. Council, Kelly’s Resort Hotel, Wexford Healing Arts Trust and private collections in Ireland and abroad.