Trained in textile design, Helen Quinn deploys a combination of screen printing, gouache, watercolor, pastels and ink on paper to create compositions of symmetrically stacked and overlapping curvilinear shapes. The Circus Rorschach series began as portraits of different stops on the 7 train in Queens but, for Quinn, has developed into something different.  These paintings, meticulously constructed abstractions, allow for an articulation of memory and perceptions of fleeting moments: colorful phantoms of her daily commute.  Having left a more representational approach behind, they have acquired the feel of modern illuminated manuscripts: ciphers of a time, place and people assembling and disassembling from view. 

In Quinn’s sculpture work, her longtime interest in animal mastheads of Viking ships shaped the series of animal heads that peer at us from the walls. They were begun as an instinctive response to the world’s events beginning in 2020. For the artist, the idea that a natural or supernatural force could guide a ship – or one’s life – through its storms gave them their power. Moreover the spirit of a ship was embodied in the masthead; it gave a face or personality, as well as protection, to the vessel as a temporary home.

Constructed in many layers of wire, papier-mache, lightweight clay, and paint, the animals appear to be emerging from the walls, lifelike and dynamic. In this exchange between the artist and materials, and now the human and animal, these artworks inhabit a space between talisman, totem and portrait—posing the question of who is peering into whose world.

Helen Quinn lives and works in Queens, New York. She has shown her work internationally including the Czech Republic and Norway. She is the recipient of two New Works Grants from the Queens Council of the Arts in 2020 and 2022. She has attended numerous residencies including a year-long program in Japan with the Henry Luce Foundation and more recently at Poco a Poco in Oaxaca, Mexico. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.