Helen M Tate, artist, sculptor & nature lover

Swedish by heart, Helen Tate grew up with her two sister and parents in a small country town in the middle of Sweden, closely connected to nature. She has lived in Amsterdam, the Isle of Man and now lives in the Maresme coast in the hilly Argentona region together with her husband, two children and dogs.

She tells her story to Maresme Connect

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Nature walks are my healing time and since childhood in my native Sweden I been a collector of objects found on my walks. My backpack is always heavy with stones, and my hands full of twigs. My sons do the same now.

The closeness to the hills, ocean, lakes and rivers are important to me. That has been the case throughout my entire blessed life. The influence from our surroundings is too big to ignore. And I love John Ruskin’s quote ‘Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.’

Poetry, quotes and beautiful written texts are all something I adore. I love writing them as well but would never share in written text, but I often add them to my artwork.

The Isle of Man is a small place to live with its quirks but I loved every minute of it.  The landscape is out of this world and both my children were born there.

I went to university at the age of 35. My interest in art has always been there but my career took me into the IT sector. It was on the Isle of Man that I took the courage to start a Bachelor degree in Fine Arts. From the first day I knew that there was no going back to another career. I feel I have found my calling.

Moving to Spain was a bit of a culture shock and only two years in,  Covid hit and it felt like a very lonely place to be, isolated from the outside world and not being able to travel to see family. I am still a little bit in shock but I am now trying to reach out more. Art helps massively with this.

The family back home in Sweden are a big influence on me and are my pillars. My dad is a blacksmith and my mum is a seamstress.  They are the crème de la crème. My sisters are my best friends.

Like Sweden, Japan has its very own and special aesthetics, something I have been studying. One obsession is with the Japanese aesthetic wabi-sabi, looking at the imperfections around us.

My artwork has been changing of late, from being very subtle and mellow to being more colourful.  My goal is to be more vivid, in my artwork but also in life.

Furthermore, my artwork is from many different materials, from found objects, to paint, paper, fabric, metal, among others.

If I could inspire people, I would want to encourage people to see the intrinsic beauty and the mystique in our surroundings. I believe that if we all start to see the core meaning of nature we will start to understand and care more about our environment.

Reading this I see that I talk a lot about nature and working together, I think that is the future –  collaborations and caretaking, both from human to human but also to our earth.

As I wrote before, I love quotes, so I will end with one (nature related of course), ‘In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks’.

 I am on instagram as @Helen.M.Tate, if you feel like collaborating, give me a shout!

Read more about Helen and her work