Umdoni Retirement Village resident, Helen Turk, is a watercolour artist who recently had some of her paintings selected to be part of an art exhibition in Somerset West.
Her art was exhibited at the International Watercolour Society of South Africa’s third National Water Media Exhibition.
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Helen had four of her paintings flown down for this. They were of coastal trees, sweetpeas on a trellis, a girl with a brown hat and a scenic river view.
Helen began painting 18 years ago when she lived in Westville. After moving to Umdoni retirement village six years ago, she decided to join an art group.
“I’ve always loved flowers so I decided to make that one of my main focuses when painting,” she said.
Watercolour painting isn’t a very popular medium of painting as it requires patience and perfection and is fairly difficult.
“The thing with watercolours is once you make a mistake, you have to start again unlike with acrylic or oil paints for example,” explained Helen.
The artistic gene came naturally to Helen, as her dad dabbled in the art of drawing. Art definitely does run in the family as her niece has a passion for creating cartoons.
Helen heard about the exhibition when she came across it on the internet. She had to first join the club online and then go through the entry process for the exhibition. Her artwork then had to be framed and posted to the Art Curator Gallery at Laurensford Wine Estate.
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“The most stressful part about this process was actually the posting part because I was worried that my work wouldn’t arrive in one piece,” she said.
This is Helen’s first big exhibition and she is content with how far she has come.
One of her biggest achievements was when she earned the ‘best on show’ title at a Westville exhibition.
“To upcoming artists, I think that one of the most important things to have in your journey is direction and not necessarily talent,” she noted.
“Enjoy what you do and do it with passion. Also, keep in mind that you can’t achieve things in a short period of time, so keep persevering.”
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