Sedona AZ (October 27, 2017) – From October through December, Sedona’s City Hall is exhibiting 15 beautiful and remarkably intricate watercolor paintings entitled Nature’s Network, created by Mary Helsaple. Raised in California, Helsaple is an avid birdwatcher, as well as a national exhibiting watercolor artist, who moved to the Southwest from Colorado in 2008. She is a realistic narrative painter and her goal is to tell a story that connects people to nature.
The premise in Helsaple’s work asks several questions:
Where and how do humans fit into their environment?
What niche do we fill and who shares it with us?
Since we engage nature every day, is this a culture clash or a symbiotic relationship?
Whether jungle, desert, water or sky, how we engage with nature is paramount to understanding our world and our responsibilities to it. My artistic efforts go in to creating detailed, poignant wildlife art that inspires others to understand the diversity of the planet s inhabitants and respect how each of us play a vital part in preserving for the future, Helsaple states.
Each painting in this collection has a written description with the premise from the artist s perspective with other clues and details to find. Helsaple’s watercolors are large works on paper, done in the narrative style with finely detailed images of plants birds, animals and insects, which merge into natural surroundings in familiar and exotic habitats. Since moving to Sedona, she has been exploring a 3D process that involves cutting, rolling, layering and adhering pieces to the paper to the watercolor paper surfaces. This technique adds depth to traditional watercolor.
