Life and Works — Helen Clapcott

Helen Clapcott, Life and Works

Helen was born in Blackpool, 1952 and moved to Stockport when she was 10. She now lives in Macclesfield on the western edge of the Peak District.

Ever since graduating from the Royal Academy Schools 1978 she has been lured back to the post-industrial landscape of the North of England, particularly around her home town of Stockport. Helen paints a town intent on erasing all evidence of its industrial heritage and replacing it with sprawling carparks, service areas, and an anonymous commuter drive-thru.

“If Lowry first opened our eyes to the beauties of the industrial scene, Clapcott is chronicling its last chapter: the decline and fall of a great cityscape, bathed in pellucid light.”

- Andrew Lambirth

mum 3.jpg — “The river, once lined by mills, is walled under concrete. Trees, absent in the early 80s, have sprouted either side of the motorway from a top soil of plastic bottles and crisp packets. I’ve watched Portwood Mills unpicked, demolished, turned to waste-ground, parks for cars, and conquered by Tesco’s.”

- Helen Clapcott

Pencil and Watercolour