Helen Douglas lives and works in the Scottish Borders. She began making and publishing Artist Books in 1974 under the imprint Weproductions: believing in the book as a primary place for Art and the reading of visual narrative. Her work engages eye, hand and body in its sequential reading. Douglas’ books have been widely exhibited in the UK, Europe and the US - where a retrospective exhibition of all her books was held at Printed Matter Inc, New York in 2018. Her books have won awards and are held in many public collections including SGMA, Edinburgh, V&A, Tate, Yale Centre for British Art and MOMA, NY. In 2006 she was made Life Member of MOMA, NY in recognition of her work in the book. In 2012 she was part of a research group with Tate/UAL in collaboration with the British Museum and V&A looking into the digital Artist Book, which resulted in the digital publication of her hand scroll The Pond at Deuchar. In 2024/25 she undertook research and made books and hand scrolls in response to the 3 billion year old Lewisian Gneiss complex of rock on North Uist, exhibiting her works in a joint exhibition with Jake Harvey, sculptor, entitled MEETING POINT Within the Lewisian.
The hand scroll Lewisian I came from this body of work. Following this ancient rock, the earliest to be formed on the surface of Planet Earth, Douglas sought to bring something of its heaving elemental enormity, its materiality, form and archaic knowledge to the viewer.
“She sees vitality and movement in stone, the flow of colour, texture and strata and in this way with image, its rendered mark and phrasing, her scrolls become a reflection of life itself, from its earliest geological beginnings to the later dawn of human creativity.”
Beth Williamson