Helen’s work is the creative and eye-catching result of her life-changing shift from one of the art capitals of Europe to a remote Aboriginal community in the arid heart of Western Australia.

After three years painting, exhibiting, living, socialising and soaking up the atmosphere in lively cosmopolitan Edinburgh, Helen returned home in 2004 to a totally alternative existence at Ululla, an indigenous community 70km south-west of Wiluna.

As the only non-indigenous female amid this isolated group of people, Helen quickly felt inspired by the local women and their amazing artwork.
“They would often sit all day painting under the shade of a tree together, often for days at a time,” she recalls, “It was an incredible experience to be able to both learn from and teach these amazing women as we shared stories and exchanged ideas on and off the canvas.”

In the next few years Helen Miller became Helen Ansell as she met the love of her life around the time of the success of her first exhibition on home soil in five years, Memoirs of a Social Life at the Gadfly Gallery. She then moved to live in Geraldton where she continued to travel to Wiluna to teach art to the indigenous community there. Her and her husband Kim then moved to Wiluna the following year where Helen was invited to manage the Tjukurba Indigenous art gallery.

Helen then moved back to Geraldton where she is continued to teach art to indigenous artists in both Wiluna and Yalgoo – and travelled over 2000km every fortnight to do so!

Helen is currently employed by FORM as one of the mentors for the Spinifex Hill Artists in South Hedland, as well as teaching art at Greenough Regional Prison.

As for her own art, Helen exhibited with the Courthouse Gallery in 2009 and is due to exhibit with the Monsoon Gallery in Broome in 2010 and with the FORM Gallery in Perth 2011. Many of her works are available on this site for sale as limited edition prints.