Helen Gotlib

Nature repeats itself through texture and form. My primary visual concern has always been an effort to document the subtle expressive beauty of nature’s patterns and the cycle of life through my explorations of the natural world. Visual associations are created between seemingly unrelated images. Patterns of nature yield compelling results when filtered through subjective experience. I explored this idea in an earlier series of drawings composed of groupings of hands and their mirror images. So evocative were the images that it was almost impossible to see the tangles of fingers I had drawn and not also see elaborate root systems. By concentrating on the intricate beauty of the interiors of plants the image associations are less obvious. I have been exploring the abstract possibilities of wood grain and sun flowers. Unlike the root hands, I found that by changing the context of the interior of a tree, the connection to the original object nearly disappears and can evoke the movement of water.