Helen Bickham
Helen Bickham is a Mexican artist, from Eurasian with American parents who began painting professionally later in life.
[1][2] Her father, Howard Montgomery, was an American officer with the U.S. Navy, who died in World War II when Bickham was only eight.
Her mother did not speak English and worked menial jobs such as sewing and housecleaning, socializing with other Euro-Asian refugees who spoke Russian.
[7] While she was in elementary school in Virginia, she was often excused from class to draw murals in the hall, usually with themes such as Thanksgiving, done on butcher paper.
She decided on American civilization as she was an immigrant and wanted to understand the ideas of Europe brought over to the continent by the original settlers.
This class had an assignment of creating a watercolor, and Bickham's desire to get the image just right caused the professor to comment that she was an artist.
However, after she saw her first real Édouard Manet painting, instead of a reproduction, she stood transfixed and returned home happy to show her ticket stub to her professor.
[9] She also had a chance to see many famous art pieces in their original spending much of her time in Europe in the museums of Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.
[5][8] In Mexico, she says she fell in love with the country instantly and decided to stay permanently, wanting to provide a bicultural experience for her sons.
[8][13] She initially lived in a small town called San Lorenzo Acopilco located just west of Mexico City proper.
She quit teaching English at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional when she asked for leave to take her children to Europe for a year and they denied it.
[9] In England she represented Mexico, presenting a latter from noted curator Fernando Gamboa to the cultural attache at the Mexican embassy there.
Her apartment has large windows which face the Plaza de las Cibeles with its fountain and provides natural light.
[2][8] Some of her more notable exhibitions have included those at the Arts Association of the State of Indiana (1963), Galería May Brooks in Mexico City (1965), Foreign Friends in Acapulco (1970), Thomoas V. Robinson Galleries in Houston TX (1978) Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles (1980), Hotel Ritz-Carlton, Boston (1982), Howard Coron Collection in New York (1985), Zum Blauen Gallery in Winterthur, Switzerland (1989) and the Galería de Arte Misrachi in Mexico City (1995), Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Casa de la Primera Impresora in Mexico City (1996), Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro in Querétaro (2003), Museo Ex Convento del Carmen in Guadalajara (2006), Galería Hecaro in Mexico City (2007) and the Forum in Xalapa (2010).
[20] Bickham has worked in a number of media including watercolor, oil, pencil, ink, lithography, engraving and paper embossing.
[6] One example of this is En el Jardin del Desierto (In the Garden of the Desert), where a man and woman stand next to each other but separated by the large thorny leaves of the maguey plant, unable to relate[11] Often, as with this painting, the subjects of the works gaze at the onlookers as if to start a dialogue.
They usually relate to relationships, isolation, introspection and readjustment[11] She states that the goal of many of the paintings is to show a crossing, either physically or spiritually to represent personal development.
We all have such a such a hard time of it.”[2] As human relationships change, she has experimented with diptychs and even triptychs, paintings the pieces so that they can be rearranged and still coincide, but in a different way.
[11] She has done some pieces in response to world events, such as the Bosnian War, the uprising in Chiapas and the murders of young women in Ciudad Júarez but does not believe in telling people how to interpret her work.
