Selected Works

Helen Robinson

Helen’s ongoing series Ode To The T-Shirt began in 2017, and she has continued to build a body of work around the idea that clothes, accessories, and more specifically t-shirts represent unspoken forms of communication and serve as tools of self-expression. For centuries fashion has allowed us to express ourselves creatively and help form a sense of identity; but recently the way we dress has become even more personal and direct. In the last few years, there has been a rising trend in graphic t-shirts vocalizing a strong point of view. Verbiage has introduced itself into our clothes, allowing us to plaster our opinions across our chests. It has become a small, yet strikingly clear, symbol of our zeitgeist. Now more than ever, people are wearing their hearts on their sleeves, literally. Whether that’s a form of protest, opinion, expression, joy, inspiration, humor, fact, or anything else, t-shirts are the perfect blank canvas for visually voicing those ideas, bridging the gap between identity and communication.

Helen’s newest drawings and paintings are an extension of her Ode To The T Shirt series that aim to celebrate New York. After a challenging year and a half due to Covid, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of people walking around in NY hats, t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, etc. People have their pride for this city plastered across their chests. Helen hopes to explore this moment in time and capture the immense pride felt by New Yorkers through a series of drawings and paintings.

Helen Robinson is an artist based out of Brooklyn, NY. She received her bachelor’s degree in Studio Art and Art History at Vanderbilt University in 2013 and continues to build her own body of work at her studio in Brooklyn. Helen’s paintings explore the nature of representation and the limitless potential of the human figure as a subject. She uses non-traditional portraiture to consider modes of self-expression and new forms of communication. Her paintings are all derived from her own photographs and studies and are documentary in style.