Helen Beard: Reclaiming Desire Through Colour and Form

Born in 1971 and originally trained in graphic design at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design, Helen Beard’s creative path took a long and winding detour through the film industry, where she worked for fifteen years before fully dedicating herself to painting. While seemingly disparate, these worlds are not as far removed as they may seem.

Artist Helen Beard in her studio © David Shoukry

“There’s quite a graphic element in my work, as well as a subconscious film influence,” she reflects. “My concentration on crops might come from camera work; the way you choose to zoom in or out.” This cinematic sensibility carries into her painting process, even if it is unintentionally. In works like Pleasure Centre (2022), Beard’s use of tight framing evokes the focused intensity of a close-up shot: “Abstractions that come from a really tight zoom-in make the work almost more accessible, you know what it is, but it could just be shapes as well.”

Between the Abstract and the Figurative

Beard’s balance between figuration and abstraction offers viewers an experience of dual recognition and ambiguity. This tension is deliberate. “Many of my friends don’t even know what’s going on in the picture sometimes,” she laughs. “Because it looks very, very abstract when it’s a close crop.”

Despite its dreamlike immediacy, Beard’s work is deeply anchored in concept and intention—particularly when it comes to language. Her painting titles are layered and lyrical, offering poetic clues to the emotional tone or source of inspiration. “I’m always collecting things—phrases from books, lines from songs. I keep a notebook of anything that resonates,” she says. “It varies a lot, but music and literature definitely shape the emotional atmosphere I work in and, quite often, a lyric I’ve had on repeat in the studio ends up as a painting title.”

There Is No Gate, No Lock, No Bolt That You Can Set Upon The Freedom Of My Mind (2024)

A standout example is There Is No Gate, No Lock, No Bolt That You Can Set Upon The Freedom Of My Mind (2024), a large-scale oil painting featuring a poised pole dancer. The title, a quote from Virginia Woolf, connects literature and liberated expression with a subversive visual of empowerment. “FKA Twigs’ video Cellophane really inspired me,” Beard explains. “Pole dancing was once purely for the male gaze, but now it’s being reclaimed—used as exercise, as powerful performance, as beauty. I wanted to echo that shift.”

Reclaiming Pleasure as a Feminist Act

Reclamation is central to Beard’s feminist ethos. Her paintings challenge the longstanding dominance of male pleasure in the depiction of sexuality. “I wanted female desire and pleasure to be seen as equally important as male pleasure—to make it so that this is a joyous thing that women can enjoy too, that can be centred on her pleasure.”

That joy is captured not just in theme, but also in palette. Beard’s bold use of colour—particularly her vivid pinks, oranges, and electric blues—feels sensuous and ecstatic. “They’re not always harmonious colours,” she notes, “but it’s about frisson–that tension you can get from a relationship or connection. Colour expresses the feeling more than anything.”

 Flutterbye and All Love Is Enclosed In Our Love in Maddox Street Berkeley Street

This emotional resonance is present throughout her 2024 works for Maddox Gallery. In All Love Is Enclosed In Our Love, a sensual energy flows through the composition, echoing intimacy without overt description. Lamprocapnos (Bleeding Heart) and Convallaria Majalis (Lily of the Valley) fuse botanical symbolism with human connection, titles drawn from Latin flower names. “There’s a natural aspect,” Beard says. “The body—especially the female body—is full of curves and undulations. I often think of it as a landscape… there’s a topography to it.”

Where Desire Meets Canvas: Collecting Helen Beard

For an artist whose practice is grounded in celebrating connection, joy, and the complexity of intimacy, Helen Beard is not simply producing images—she’s creating space. Her canvases become vessels for vulnerability and power alike, inviting the viewer into a world where softness and strength are not opposites, but coexisting forces. In Beard’s universe, eroticism is not an object of voyeurism, but an act of reclamation. It is through her unapologetically bold colour palette and intimate compositions that she redefines female pleasure—not as spectacle, but as sovereign.

For collectors and admirers, Helen Beard’s works at Maddox Gallery offer a rare opportunity to acquire pieces that stand at the intersection of contemporary art and feminist discourse—works that are as intellectually compelling as they are visually powerful. Each painting is a celebration of intimacy, captured with painterly confidence and an unmistakable voice that refuses to be muted.

To enquire about available works and immerse yourself in Beard’s evocative, ever-expanding world, contact our team at Maddox Gallery. Whether you are a seasoned collector or new to her practice, these pieces offer not just a moment, but a movement—a radiant testament to the expressive potential of the body, the brush, and the gaze that sees it.

Step into Helen Beard’s radiant universe—where abstraction meets desire, and pleasure is reclaimed with unapologetic joy and emotional depth.

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