Art sp20
by Michele Malinchak
Summers on the boardwalk conjure up images of seagulls gliding and the whiff of French fries. You might also see portrait artists at work with small crowds gathered around them, watching as they whip out quick sketches that draw oohs and aahs. Long before she became a fine artist, Helena Van Emmerik-Finn got her start sketching portraits at the shore.
In her early 20’s, Helena applied for the position of portrait artist by drawing a model on the spot in Wildwood, NJ. She lived and worked there during summers, saving what she earned from her drawings for travel the rest of the year. “The pay was good, even for back then,” she said. “I had wanderlust,” she added, taking trips to India, North Africa and Europe. “I spent five months in Europe on $500.00.”
She also lived in London for two years, supporting herself by sketching portraits in charcoal and pastel at Green Park in the City of Westminster. One of the more famous portraits she drew was of reggae legend Bob Marley. In London to support the Jamaican team at a ping pong tournament, Marley and some of his band approached her at the park to have their portraits done.
“I was really nervous,” she said. “His portrait didn’t turn out that well, but he didn’t say anything.”
In addition to sketching more realistic portraits, Helena learned to draw caricatures, which were done in felt tip pen and chalk with exaggerated features. Customers picked the theme they wanted, and their stylized portraits were drawn with large heads and little bodies. Occasionally she’d encounter a dissatisfied customer, “But that’s part of the business,” she said. She’d spend a total of 25 years doing portraits and caricatures before her fine art career took off.
The art of caricature actually began in Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first artists to use caricature to capture the unusual, often grotesque faces he observed. Other artists during that time practiced it as well to develop their skills and as a break from their rigorous training
Having to work quickly with a model in front of you not only develops drawing skills but sharpens the ability to size up a subject and capture the essence of that individual. As author Joseph Conrad said, “A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.”
Around 1986, Helena took a job at Sesame Place in Oxford Valley, PA doing caricatures of children for the next ten years. She also did caricatures at parties and events and her skills were further developed by a friend, Barbara Haas, who showed her how to use line and tone in caricature. Also during this time she began creating her fine art, participating in art festivals while doing caricature jobs. In 2000, she stopped doing caricatures altogether, concentrating on her fine art from then on.
Her career in fine art shows no sign of slowing down. She is always searching for new images with her camera, which she says, “… keeps things exciting and makes me can’t wait to get to my easel.” Half her paintings are done in her studio from photographs and the other half consist of work done on site, or plein air. “Plein air work has made my studio work better,” she said.
The photos she works from are carefully cropped in pencil to frame the composition. Then she’ll sketch the subject with pastel pencil which eventually fades into the finished painting. She spends a great deal of time drawing and making corrections, working the bugs out of the composition so when she’s ready to apply the soft pastels, they’ll look clean and spontaneous.
Helena said that caricature work has helped with her plein air paintings. “I am less self-conscious working in front of people and am used to working very quickly,” she said.
For the past five years she’s been a member of the Peace Valley Plein Air Painters and enjoys painting in plein air festivals. “It’s both stressful and wonderful at the same time,” she said. She’s been in five festivals so far, three of which included the Bucks County Plein Air Festival, where she won second place in 2018 and 2019.
As a child, she wanted to become a graphic artist/illustrator rather than a fine artist. The youngest of five children, Helena was born shortly after her parents emigrated here from Holland with her older siblings. She grew up in Nockamixon Township until 1966 when their home was one of 290 properties seized by the state’s eminent domain law to build Lake Nockamixon. The family then moved to Upper Black Eddy.
Helena attended St. John the Baptist School in Ottsville, PA (now called Regina Academy at St. John the Baptist) until the eighth grade, finishing grades nine to twelve at Quakertown Community High School.
“My art education at the high school was far superior to what I learned at college,” she said. She took art classes as often as possible, up to 10 periods a week and spoke fondly of Mr. Nye, the art teacher then. He, along with her guidance counselor, encouraged her to pursue higher art education. “They brought both my parents in and talked them into letting me attend college.”
Due to funding through the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), she was able to attend Philadelphia College of Art from 1966 to 1970. Though she set out to be a graphic designer, she switched majors and also studied photography and film making.
While living in Center City and attending college she worked part-time at Strawbridge’s department store and also for one summer there. She was a gofer in their advertising department, but decided it wasn’t for her.
After college she did her portrait work at the shore until about age 29. She then waitressed at the Doylestown Inn where she met her husband, Bob.
Today, she’ll occasionally take on a portrait commission if she is allowed to follow her own style, but there are countless other subjects she enjoys painting.
Her current body of impressionistic work consists of pastels and oil paintings in a wide range of subjects, including landscapes, still life and animals. “Farm animals are my favorite subjects to paint,” she said. She also likes painting common objects like teapots, old dry sinks or roadside mailboxes, imbuing them with a star quality all their own.
Most of her work is done is soft pastels, but recently she has experimented with oil paints. She uses water soluble, non-toxic oil paints which she likes to apply with a palette knife onto boards rather than canvas.
For the past 26 years Helena and her husband have lived in Buckingham Township. In their kitchen she has an impressive collection of Delftware, the hand-painted blue and white pottery from Holland. She has been back there to visit and on her website are several works of Dutch windmills and seaside villages that capture the country’s old world atmosphere.
Some of her favorite artists include Swedish artist Anders Zorn, American painter John Singer Sargent and French born Edouard Vuilard.
In 2018 Helena was the featured artist at the Tinicum Arts Festival and in 2019 she exhibited at the ten day juried art festival in Easton, Maryland where six of her paintings sold.
This spring she will be in the Chadds Ford Art Show in Chadds Ford, PA from March 20 to March 21, and in June she will have a solo show at Stover Mill Gallery in Tinicum, PA.
Helena is represented by the following galleries: Exhibit B Gallery, Souderton, PA; Maureen’s Gallery, Exton, PA; The Station Gallery, Greenville DE and Barbara Moore Fine Art in Chadds Ford, PA. You can see more of Helena’s art at: hvefinn.com.
Michele Malinchak is a freelance writer and avid gardener from Quakertown, PA.