Resident Artist

Top photo: Helena plein air painting at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park

Meet the artist behind the works displayed at the AWA office

Helena Antolin Cochrane

I came to Singapore from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in August 2018. In Philadelphia, I had joined the Urban Sketchers organization, and I joined the local Singapore chapter (USKSG) as soon as I moved here. In my early 20’s, I took courses in watercolor at the University of Pennsylvania with renowned Philadelphia watercolorist Guna Mundheim, but ended up doing advanced studies in Spanish language, literature and culture. I have painted all my life, stealing moments while working as a Spanish teacher for 35 years.

Watercolor has always been my preferred medium: it is portable, versatile and luminous. Still, I have concentrated on improving my rendering skills in pencil, figure-drawing, and observation skills. I paint both still life and live models, and I recently took a Chinese ink painting course.

Tiong Poh Rd. at Sit Wah Rd.

My paintings are my way of exploring a place, commemorating an event, and connecting with people. My artist heroes over the years have been very traditional painters like Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Maurice Prendergast and J.M.W. Turner. I owe a great deal to friends from the 1978 Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts with whom I’ve maintained contact. Here in Singapore, I have found a remarkably welcoming community of artists.

It would be impossible to overstate the positive impact that participating in art has had on my life here. Everyone I have met through painting here, without exception, has helped me not only to hone my craft, but also to feel at home in Singapore. I’ve learned about corners on painting meet-ups that it would have taken years for me to discover on my own. Singapore Urban Sketchers love to gather together to paint the same spot from a range of perspectives, then share what they’ve done, critique (admire) each other's work, then have lunch together. They can’t get enough conversation about good sketching locations, cool new art supplies, instructional videos for technique, and great foods

Emerald Hill

Plein air painting at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park to eat together after a sketching session. Sometimes the sketching venue is a restaurant that has especially nice-looking bowls of laksa for us to paint before we eat. It’s a joyful experience from beginning to end. When Singapore went into its COVID Circuit Breaker in April of 2020, the sharing moved online, and people hosted sketching challenges through Facebook that kept us painting and connected. We were ecstatic that Phase II allowed us to meet in person again last fall, and had to exercise a lot of restraint to keep our plein air groups small and distanced.

I am continually inspired by the plein air groups I have joined -- USKSG, but also others: you will see Tuesday Outdoor Painters out in the heat, sometimes fleeing the rain, often seeking the shade, and always working to capture the light. I have learned so much since taking up painting full-time when I arrived here in the tropics. Everywhere I turn, there is something to try to capture, and I can't find enough hours in a day to record what I see. My Singapore is in my sketchbooks and finished paintings and drawings, which evoke the sweet feeling of home in this intensely memorable way.