By Allison Malafronte
At the young age of 17, Helen Bouchard found her creative calling and the style she would pursue for years to come on a high-school trip to Florence, Italy. Suddenly in the epicenter of Renaissance art and architecture, the young artist stared with wide-eyed amazement at Old Master paintings on the walls of local churches, masterpieces at the Pitti Palace and Uffizi Gallery, and ancient sculpture and architecture around seemingly every corner.
With that formative experience firmly planted in her mind, Bouchard returned home and made her way to the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle. The school’s classical-realist curriculum is centered on learning how to draw and paint the figure by first learning how to accurately see form. Students progress through a series of techniques including Bargue drawings (direct copies of lithographs created by 19th-century French artist Charles Bargue), cast drawings, painting in grisaille, and finally painting the full figure with a limited palette. While a student at the academy, Bouchard won a summer scholarship to the Florence Academy of Art and was able to visit Italy once more.
Now making her home and studio in picturesque Oregon, Bouchard finds her Florentine experiences and figurative education still informing her work. “That training is the single best thing I could have done to improve my understanding and skills,” the artist says. “Not only did we learn how to draw and paint the figure from life but we also learned the discipline needed to become a professional artist and put in the time every day.”
Although she now paints a range of subjects, Bouchard frequently returns to the figure. “It’s a wonderful way to communicate the human experience in a language people understand,” she says. “I love learning about people’s stories. I’ve been an avid journaler all my life, and paintings are like journal entries to me. They are records of my life experiences and the people I meet.” To learn more, visit www.hlbouchard.com.
This article is part of the Figuratively Speaking: Figure Paintings to Collect portfolio.
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