Biography

Helena Traill is a British contemporary oil painter whose work sits between post-impressionism, expressionism, and abstraction. She transforms landscapes (both rural and urban) into sensory narratives built from colour, texture, and emotion. Her paintings aren’t about exact places, but about what it feels like to stand within them.

Helena’s creative process starts with painting en plein air, often sketching and observing on location to absorb the nuances of light, temperature, and movement. Her final works are developed in the studio, where she layers memory, instinct and structure to create compositions that feel both grounded and dreamlike. With a deliberately limited, symbolic palette, she paints not to document, but to translate an environment. This might be aimed at capturing a season’s shift, a gust of wind, or the memory of spring before it arrives.

As a neurodivergent artist, Helena experiences the world through overlapping sensory impressions. Painting allows her to bring calm to the chaos which offers her moments of stillness and depth in a fast-moving world. Her work has been described as “a thousand snapshots collapsed into one,” and her unique process reflects a generation navigating short-form content, fragmented attention, and longing for grounding.

Helena studied Graphic Communication Design at Central Saint Martins before completing a Master’s at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. Her background in design influences her keen sense of composition and form, while her emotional and instinctive approach brings a raw immediacy to her paintings.

In 2025, she held her debut solo exhibition in Chelsea, which sold out and led to acquisitions from private and corporate collectors. Her work has been commissioned for Loveday, Belgravia, and featured in exhibitions at the Royal Society of Arts and Harvey Horswell’s Sculpture Walk. She is currently represented by Harvey Horswell.

Notable Collections

  • The Royal Society of Arts and Commerce

  • Private Commission Clients, Gray M.C.A

  • London series on view at Loveday Belgravia, London

  • Private collection, London, Art Critic

  • Cotswold’s interior design project, series of three works

  • Notable private collection of contemporary art, London, masterwork

  • Large scale painting, Former Lloyd’s Broker art collection

Exhibitions

  • Dr Cross Room Takeover, RSA House, June–September 2025

  • Harvey Horswell x Treasure House, Artist in Residence, June 2025

  • ‘Helena Traill en plein air’, Solo Exhibition, 28 Flowers, Chelsea, London, February 2025

Timeline

  • 1997 - Born, London

  • 2015 to 2019 - Central Saint Martins

  • 2017 - Doomed Gallery, Dalston, London

  • 2019 - Central Saint Martins Degree Show

  • 2022 - Time Art Exhibition, The Brain Tumour Charity, London

  • 2022 to 2025 - Royal College of Art

  • 2022 to 2024 - My Artistic Practice, Central Saint Martins

  • 2024 - Private Studio Exhibition, Surrey

  • 2025 - The Royal Society of Arts, In Conversation With

  • 2025 - Grand Designs Live Talk

  • 2025 - Live Painting at RSA Open House

  • 2025 - Royal West Academy of Art

  • 2025 - Treasure House, Neurodivergent Artist Talk

  • 2025 - 28 Flowers, In Conversation with Ashley Gray

  • 2025 - Conversations in Colour, Influencer event with 250k+ reach

  • 2025 - Plein Air Demonstration, London

  • 2025 - Chiswick Auction House, Charity Auction Trail

Press