Helen is a Painter. She was born in 1951 in Southport, Lancashire and brought up mainly in Scotland where she studied a diploma in drawing and painting at the Edinburgh College of Art and was awarded a post graduate diploma “Highly Commended” and an Andrew Grant Travel Scholarship to Turkey, Switzerland, Italy, East Africa, West Indies and Iran.

Helen has won many prestigious awards and prizes as well as a John Moores Prize in 1976 which resulted in being invited by Professor Peter de Francia, one of the judges, to apply to attend the Royal College of Art and was accepted. During her time there Helen was greatly inspired by many aspects of the Royal College in particular being tutored by Roberto Matta who was the resident artist that year at The Painting School. She left to take up an invitation to live and work in the West Indies and to play Mas as a crab in Peter Minshall’s band “The Carnival of The Sea” at the Trinidad Carnival.

After bringing up six children in London and Colchester she now lives and works in Folkestone.

As well as in Galleries and Private Collections, Helen’s work is also featured on book covers and as part of shop window displays winning the best independent bookshop window display 2008 and the Wellcome Trust Curious Window display 2014 runner-up awards.

She has had numerous solo shows including at The Sassoon Gallery, Folkestone in 2017 and also exhibited in group shows at the Royal Scottish Academy and The Royal Academy as well as in many independent galleries. Her work is represented in many private and public collections Worldwide including The Imperial War Museum, Paintings for Hospitals and The Crown Agents. The painting of “The Birthday Party” was selected and sold at Auction at the Royal College of  Art on the BBC2 TV programme “Show Me The Monet” in 2011.

“Helen Lee is a resourceful painter whose work hovers close to caricature but has a weight and presence that the term might not fully convey”
Mel Gooding (Art Critic, Curator & Professor)

“Her flair for composition and her quasi-naive treatment of the human figure which communicates feeling so directly, continue to give pleasure and delight”
Edward Gage (Art Critic)

“Perhaps best of all I liked Helen Lee, whose pictures of strange and slightly grotesque people carrying a television set through the streets, taking tea at Fortnum’s or selling a watermelon have a wholly personal quirkiness which is very beguiling”
John Russell Taylor (Art Critic & Author)

“There is something both open and secretive about Helen Lee’s art… Her canvases – or boards – are generous, whereas her subjects retain some closeness or even mystery.  Who are those people in the George hotel?”
Peter Kennedy (local Arts Editor)