Helen Clapcott Art

These wonderfully obsessive pieces, painted over the past 30 years, show the mutation and development of a formerly industrial valley, now a commuting corridor. The three Rs — river, rail, and road — have long controlled Stockport, which today includes a motorway, a tangle of roundabouts, sliproads, and a pyramid.

Helen Clapcott is one of the few painters working in egg tempera, and her paintings have been constantly studied via sketching on location, each one labored over for months, if not years. They aren’t critical, and they don’t support a cause or a position. They are a light-filled celebration, as well as a profound respect for a particular environment.

Helen Clapcott, who was born in Blackpool and currently lives in Macclesfield husband artist Ian Pollock, studied Fine Arts at Liverpool Polytechnic and the Royal Academy Schools, winning both the Green Shield Foundation Award and the David Murray Landscape Award. She has held solo shows at Stockport Art Gallery, Salford City Art Gallery, The New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham, and Scholar Fine Art, London, as well as participating in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions regularly.