Artist Profile: Helene Deroubaix

Artist: Helene Deroubaix
Business name: The Fairy Attic
Location: North of France

Website and blog:
The Fairy Attic
Helene Deroubaix blog
Antique Fairy Artshop blog
Etsy shop

Whenever I miss her

How do you describe your work?
My work is soulful and poetic, I paint and make collage artworks. I express my personas, pieces of my beloved ones and humanity. I am a story teller and a philosophy of life sharer.

What is your creative process like?
It depends on my mood but I like to research about everything when I have an idea in mind.
I love to read a lot about mythologies and any other things that will inspire my paint project.
I give also lots of free room to spontaneity and I love taking risks, trying to push the limits doing something new.
I feel painting/collages are beings that comes to me.
Last time I was looking at the picture of a beautiful pale face red head woman and I paint a black woman. It was really strange and her presence was so intense to me, I could see her life and strength in her eyes.
I felt just like a vessel to express past lives or other worlds entities.
The process of creating is like giving birth, painful and beautiful, full of mysteries and new discoveries. There are walls and struggles too but all in all it’s all worth it!
Making art is also therapy at times.

My art table is a rainbow mess, I believe in serendipity and synchronicty. Magic happens with mistakes and shedding emotions.
I don’t really plan ideas, but as I said above I like research, so I jot notes here and there in a paper diary, I draw sketches, I put words of the moment, how I feel, words that describe me at a present time but I don’t know how my work will look like before it’s finished.
Yet sometimes I can see an artwork in my mind screen and when I can make it when it just looks like what I have mentally seen, it’s pure Bliss!

I prefer silence. When I am all absorbed in my work I need silence to be able to listening closely to the muses.
I need concentration. Oh yes I can work for hours straight and I love those days.
It is when Passion and Inspiration lead my existence, and nothing can interfere!
I love when I can be very productive and impress myself with lots of work. I guess I am lucky to have plenty of time to do so.

What kind of training did you have which helped you achieve your current level of artistry?
I have a bachelor degree in English+ American literature and civilisation and it has helped me a lot because this is thanks to being bilingual that I have discovered Mixed media world!

But I have always been self taught, just recently bought my first art magazines because I could afford it.
I enjoying progressing at my own rythme.
I have been making art since 2004 & I am glad of where I am now, I love to imagine where I will be in 5 or 10 years, the improvement, the new discoveries!
I always love to learn new techniques and that’s also why I have dared to begin to draw, I feel frustrated by the limitations of mixed media collages only.
I wanted to create more, express more and so here I am.

I began to trade decos in 2002/2003 and I was sort of creative but not daring for at that time I had too much self doubts, I had a very low self esteem and my life was not the way I wanted it.
I also had depression due to being unemployed and for other reasons in my life and with the risk to appear like a stereotype of the tortured artist, depression has helped me dared to be me.
I have awaken at that time.
The day I sold my first artwork proved me I was on the right path and that was my calling, I knew I had always been an artist in my soul as I had been writing poetry for years.

A new-born world

Is there a tool or material that you can’t imagine living without?
Yes acrylics, I adore paint, the touch of it, the colors. the action of painting is very soothing.
I know anytime I feel in low spiritis I take my brush and it really does solace me.
That is also why I had to draw and give life to characters myself thanks to painting.

What inspires you to create?
So many things inspire me to create, humanity, the sound of the world, stories I have read, poetry, tori amos for she is really an artist I admire.
I love how she thinks I totally relate, it echoes my inner world and I feel understood in her music and lyrics.
I am inspired by fairytales,legends, mythologies , buddhism and hinduism philosophies.
The muses both the unseen and the one I meet , friends, family ,beloved ones.
There are days I can be inspired by a word, its sound, the way it makes me feel or perceive mental images.
My dreams at night do inspire me too.
Whenever I have artist’s block I know it is because I struggle with myself, the inside war is never the better way. I learn in this but whenever I feel an artist’s block most of the time it is because I stop for a moment believing in myself.
It may be short but creates real damages, sometimes it brings a long stagnation in my work.

What inspires you to keep going when the work gets frustrating or tough?
Thinking. I also have made good friends with the muses now and they know how to cheer me up.
If I get really sad and frustrated I just choose to dig the darkness and paint it.
That is why I can sometimes make a really very sad and torn face and feel fine and smiling like freed again from my demons until the next time ^_^

My believing mirrors (dearest friends and supporters of my art) help me a lot too whenever I doubt and feel like giving up they are there to listen and to give me the right word to keep going.
I pay it forward always.
I also know that sometimes it’s good to take a small break. To visualize what you want to do, to accept the struggling phase and to stop dwelling in self depreciation that is useless.
I think the best is always to move on, to live through this.
I use all my gashes and breaks in my work, I make them be my strength.

Acknowledge your own beauty

What is your best piece of advice for those who would like to rise in their level of artistry?
I don’t like much the word advice, I always feel I am nothing and no one to give advice and people’s advice as if they were the New greatest artist of the century just annoys me, it’s preposterous!

I just love to support my sisters anytime whatever their skills and art can be! I think we all have a talent, we all have a spark to share!
The best in this is to first know and love oneself, to be supportive and daring.
I think we have to know what we want to do. If we want to be an artist for instance we have to go for it!
we have doubts, bring them along and you’ll show them what you can do! they will erase themselves bits by bits.
The real problems in the art world is comparision and always putting some artist in the lights.
There are more than one artist in mixed media or any kind of art!
You are unique! you are different so go spread your soul pieces!

What takes up the majority of your time besides your art?
Writing (poetry, blog, letters,answering emails) and the business ( so much work!!), all the administrative stuff about it, the advertisement, all the boring stuff, and of course the chores of the desperate housewife (kidding) but even if I have a love who is very patient and does a lot to help me I also have chores to do and sometimes when you just want to paint it feels such an unpleasant way to use your hands

The sky of broken promises

What do you like to do to relax?
Listen to piano music, especially by tori amos, soothing music, I can lie on my bed and just do nothing but visualise future works. Sometimes paintings take time to birth.