Helen Sinclair
Exhibition 8th March – 29th March 2008

Helen Sinclair is marking 20 years as a sculptor with an exhibition at Swansea’s Attic Gallery. It features a number of new sculptures which will be exhibited for the first time.


Girl with Teddy, stone - resin, £275


Know Not Your Own Secret, stone - resin, £2500
Helen Sinclair was born in South Wales in1954 and studied sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art. She then taught for twelve years becoming Head of Art at Ffynone House School, Swansea. In 1988 she left teaching to become a full time sculptor, setting up a studio in 18th Century farm buildings at the end of the Gower peninsula.

Her first sculptures were designed for gardens and she developed her own materials that would be suitable for outdoors. Her current work is meant both for the home and the garden. With her technician (traveller and writer Gary Ley) she does her own mould-making and resin casting although much of her work is now cast into bronze.

The main body of Helen’s work is figuratively based, however loosely at times. Her primary inspiration is, quite simply, the human form: the actual figure in movement, at rest, clothed and unclothed. She models in plaster, clay, wax and mixed media, regularly using a life model.

Over the Rainbow, bronze, £1950
Helen Sinclair makes much use of broken furniture, driftwood and other found material from Rhossili beach near her home.  Her use of paper and cardboard and driftwood is a ‘style’ very much her own.  She is constantly working on new pieces and exploring fresh themes.

Seventeen, bronze, £1850
“I personally can be far more expressive in three dimensions than in two. I think there’s a primordial urge in human beings to make three-dimensional things – it was a much earlier art form than painting. These days making sculptures is an everyday business for me and the familiarity of the processes is quite comforting, but it is very stimulating and exciting as well, and I do often feel I’m doing something people have done for millennia.”

Who is Sylvia?, stone - resin, £3850
Wooden Hill, bronze, £1580

Sometimes she employs a life model, in which case she will make a large number of small clay, wax or plaster models during one sitting. These later act as starting points for larger pieces of work. Besides the human form, Helen is inspired by the paintings of Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani and Chagall. Often a sculpture will make direct reference to the painting that inspired it.

She exhibits widely in England and Wales and annually at the Chelsea Flower Show.  She has work in private collections in Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, America, Australia and New Zealand. Recent commissions include ‘The Mother and the Child’ for All Saints Church, Fulham and ‘Still Sitting’ for Gary Rhodes’ restaurant, ‘Rhodes 24’.