about helen
Art Practice
Hardaker’s paintings and drawings are full of life and contemplation. Often evoked through animal shapes and animals found on the side of country lanes, Hardaker’s work is both serious and playful.
The drawings are visceral and free, with a mesmerising quality of line and smudge. Hardaker’s paintings are rich in colour and viscosity, amplifying intense emotions and shouty passions about the subjects within.
Hardaker chases opportunities for collaboration. Hardaker’s work ethic and processes are central to her output. Daring, funny, warm, emotional, imaginative, process is the vehicle to her communication and language is key.
Compared to artists such as Dubuffet, Harring, Rego and Kiff, Hardaker will often include inspiration from artists work into her own narratives; Mondrian for his methods of abstraction and Bonnard in order to unsettle his settled interiors. Exploring paradox and ambiguity, Hardaker aims through her, art to invite the audience to contemplate and make philosophical reflections of life, living, dying and death.
Maintaining a professional output alongside academic teaching, ‘Can’t Stop Thinking About it’ (Yoshitomo, 2011) is a phase harnessed by Hardaker to make sense of the existence of her artworks and why they are made.
References for her work (real, not imagined), act as co-creators to her physical, imaginative and internal act of painting, transforming subjects (that she can’t stop thinking about) such as the custodian responsibilities of humankind and the craziness of animal and human kingdoms co-existing (just about) on planet Earth.
Academic Crossover
Helen Hardaker gained a first-class honours degree in Fine art at Cardiff art college (1987) before taking a post graduate route at Goldsmiths College London (1988) and gaining a distinction at master’s level in Fine Art at University of Gloucestershire (2007).
Inspired by the Art for All Movement (Generative AI 2025) and embracing the famous quote ‘Every human being is an artist …’ (Beuys 1978), Hardaker works collaboratively and has exhibited at the Tate Modern, Riverside Art studios, the Arts Council for Wales, Glastonbury Festival, and locally SVA, Prema Arts and more.
Hardaker teaches teachers how to teach art, campaigns for creative arts in schools, ‘All Schools should be Art Schools’ (Smith 2016) and strives for participation opportunities with her audiences.
Further study took Hardaker beyond the drawn and painted image, animating her work, producing short films and videos. Both Prema Arts Centre in Uley and Meantime Artists Space in Cheltenham have been important place for experimentation and development for Hardaker’s work, where she has had solo exhibitions and run art workshops.
Alongside her art Hardaker is passionate about her other professional practice, teaching the primary art and design and expressive arts curriculums, and inclusive education at the University of Gloucestershire. For Hardaker, there are clear crossovers between her academic and artistic practices.
