Timeline

Helen Cantrell is a contemporary printmaker and painter, whose gestural expressionist style uses wood and Dremel drills in printmaking, big drips and palette knife sweeps in painting, while depicting familiar suburban places and creatures. Animals become mythical when combined in different ways; they make up their own new stories, as in these woodcuts. Born in Chicago in 1947, Cantrell majored in painting at Washington University, moved to New York City in 1968 where she attended the Art Students League for many years while working as a typesetter, then returned to the Museum School in Boston (SMFA at Tufts) to receive a Studio Arts Degree in 2005. Her work has been exhibited widely in New England, while her prints have been juried into a recent International Print Center New York group exhibit and several Site:Brooklyn shows. She lives and works in Old Lyme, Connecticut.