HELEN WITT

From the time I was fifteen years old, geometry, patterns, shapes, and color became my life. Every teacher I had, had Bauhaus in their blood. My first art teacher in high school was getting an advanced degree at the Institute of Design (School of the Bauhaus) (IIT, Chicago). She let me read her thesis on perception and I was hooked. I studied with every Bauhaus teacher I could find in Chicago, starting at ID (IIT). Making art is in my DNA. I have been making art for 64 years. I worked as paid staff at Phoenix Art Museum, working with the curators, working in the vaults, working on the exhibitions. Then I went to the Scottsdale Cultural Council and worked at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in a similar role. Doing this type of work gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted and I was never in the position of having to grind out the same thing over and over. I just worked in series and after around 25 pieces, I could go on to the next idea. I had fine teachers and a Bauhaus passion.

Medium: Painting

Style: Abstract • Nonrepresentational geometric acrylic and india ink paintings on canvas and paper, seeing color in action via shapes as modernist abstraction. Josef Albers, Johannes Itten, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, all Bauhaus people who developed color theory influenced my work, and a recent addition, Hilma af Klint