Artwork copyright Karin Helmich. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Orange Amaryillis, 1983

Karin Helmich
American (born 1943)

Location: NEWTECH Skills Center, Spokane

About the Artwork

'Orange Amaryllis' is a photo-realistic watercolor painting by artist Karin Helmich. This piece is part of a series featuring close-up imagery of flowers. The series began as part of a larger group of Seattle cityscapes. She created the image by first projecting a photograph onto her paper. She used the projection to outline her composition in pencil. She notes, "It is relevant to point out that I consider myself a photo-realist, since the camera and the photograph provide visual information I could not get by sitting in front of my subject and painting from it. The camera freezes the change and movement to a split second in time, allowing extreme close-ups of such transitory objects as a blooming flower."

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Spokane Public Schools.

About the Artist

Northwest artist Karin Helmich creates realistic landscape and still life paintings. Many of her paintings focus on the interplay of color, light, and shadow in urban landscapes.
Born in Jackson, Wyoming, Helmich received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Whitworth College in Spokane in 1965. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Washington State University in Pullman, Eastern Washington in 1967.