Fringed Prairie Orchids

about me

"My visual concerns run the gamut from careful study to poetic, symbolic and sometimes political representations of nature and human nature.”

Helen Klebesadel is an artist, an educator, and an activist.  Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, her art has become the place where she explores how we learn our deepest values.   Klebesadel is best known for her environmental and women centered watercolors. She is particularly interested in how myths and stories socialize us to have different expectations for some people than from others.  She uses the creative process to re-examine and re-present narratives that resist and contest existing power structures by revealing they exist.  Klebesadel exhibits her work nationally and internationally.

Helen’s watercolors push the traditional boundaries of the medium in scale, content, and technique.   Her paintings range in size from the intimate to the monumental. She creates paintings that are transparent watercolors on paper, starting with detailed drawings and developing the images with layer upon layer of color washes and dry brush technique mixed with occasional areas of wet-into-wet spontaneity.  She paints until the paintings tell her she is done.  Helen  also transforms her  painted images into fabric designs and she is exploring the potential  of a merger of her imagery with fiber based works.