I’m an Alberta-based artist, designer, and writer living between the prairies and mountains.

I’m an Alberta-based artist, designer, and writer living between the prairies and mountains.

I’m an Alberta-based artist, designer, and writer living between the prairies and mountains.

Inspired by my grandma who was a prolific fibre artist, my work connects my love for stories with illustration and the desire to create with my hands. I work in digital and traditional media, with relief printmaking being a particular love of mine.

Inspired by my grandma who was a prolific fibre artist, my work connects my love for stories with illustration and the desire to create with my hands. I work in digital and traditional media, with relief printmaking being a particular love of mine.

Inspired by my grandma who was a prolific fibre artist, my work connects my love for stories with illustration and the desire to create with my hands. I work in digital and traditional media, with relief printmaking being a particular love of mine.

Working in my sketchbook is one of my favourite things, and you’ll often find me with a pen in one hand and a tasty iced matcha latte in the other!

Working in my sketchbook is one of my favourite things, and you’ll often find me with a pen in one hand and a tasty iced matcha latte in the other!

Working in my sketchbook is one of my favourite things, and you’ll often find me with a pen in one hand and a tasty iced matcha latte in the other!

artist statement

My work explores and celebrates the relationship between nature and humans—both the tension and the wonder, the wildness and the stewardship. As seen in my linocut triptych, ‘Nature’s Dance’,
I am particularly drawn to the vibrancy in nature and the teeming life throughout earth. As nature moves continually through the seasons of birth, renewal, and transformation I seek to understand how the rhythms of the land, sea and sky are echoed in the cycles of our own lives.

I have been formatively influenced by the unique perspectives of varying past and contemporary artists, particularly Franklin Booth, Gustave Doré, Kat Flint and Elise Hurst. Elise Hurst has coined the term, ‘imaginative narrative art’ which she defines as “artwork that attempts to draw from people an imaginative act of story-telling inspired by illustrations of rich, though only glimpsed, worlds. These worlds are usually a blend of the natural and surreal, and are all interconnected.”¹ In a similar way, but with my own voice and style, I seek to blend imaginative whimsy with stylized realism. My hope is that as the viewer peeks into a larger world, their imagination starts to wander and they ponder the symbolism and meanings undergirding my work, and imagine their own stories to complete the narrative.

¹ E. Hurst, ‘On My Art.’ Elise Hurst [website page], 2022, https://elisehurst.com/pages/on-my- art.

Quote below: A. Carter and J. Fleskes, Letter to Theodore Dreiser, 124, 2022. Franklin Booth: Silent Symphony.

“Art is a matter of feeling.”

“Art is a matter of feeling.”

“Art is a matter of feeling.”

— Franklin Booth —

— Franklin Booth —

Kim vanderHelm © 2023, all rights reserved

Kim vanderHelm © 2023, all rights reserved