WONDER WALL

Helen Downie is a woman in a moment of self-expression, revelation and revolution. An artist who found fame on Instagram under the moniker “Unskilled Worker”, she is now part of Alessandro Michele’s extended fashion family at Gucci. Alison Veness spoke to

Helen Downie: “Italy is where I began to paint, around three years ago. We come here most summers, for around five or six months – even before I started painting.” Alison Veness: “What do you paint when you’re there?” HD: “I paint the same. It doesn’t make any difference where I am. I could actually be anywhere in the world, really, in a very small room just painting away. So I don’t start painting countrysides or buildings.” (Laughs.) AV: “Do you keep a journal or a notebook of ideas, or is it just what you soak up?” HD: “No, it’s really just what comes out. I’m not a typical artist. I don’t even make pre-drawings of the paintings. I’m working on a really big piece at the moment. For me a big piece takes about five days. This one is actually drawn out with a pencil but I find the scariest thing is a piece of paper. For me, it’s daunting to have a huge white piece of paper, so I just need to cover it in very quickly and quite frantically. I’m on day two of this and this is the laborious bit. The actual fun bit only happens about 20 minutes towards the end.” AV: “Do you already in your mind’s eye see the colours and presumably what she, or the people in this picture, might wear?” HD: “Yes. This is a Gucci piece. So what I will do is go through my phone – I store all the shots from the show – and then I start grouping them together to see which ones work. The main thing for me is the clothes, but it’s also to give those clothes a personality because until they’re on a character it’s just a jacket, a very, very beautiful jacket, but it’s just a jacket. So the main thing for me is to give the paintings some kind of life, and usually that comes from my memory bank and often from my teenage years. It wasn’t

a conscious thing: I just found myself painting people I had known, or … the last one I posted, a beauty work that came from my childhood. I think a lot of the time I’m trying to get that feeling I had when I first looked at books. Do you remember that feeling? Where you could climb into the picture.” AV: “Yes, love that.” HD: “I stopped painting at 14, I was expelled from school. I was … not really naughty, I just didn’t want to wear their uniform. I always had a very strong idea of what I should wear. Anyway, I was a pain in the arse and they asked me to leave. And I didn’t pick up a paintbrush again until I was 48. So I think a lot of what comes out is actually me putting out over 30 years, but it comes out in a childlike way because the last time I painted I was a child.” AV: “Yes, it’s like girl, interrupted.” HD: “And actually, the same things interest me as when I was a child. Kings and queens and Elizabeth I.” AV: “I can see there is a formality of a portrait in your portraits. They have a slightly regal air, even if she’s wearing a big goofy pair of Gucci glasses.” HD: “I think a lot of my early inspiration as a child was people like Holbein. I’ll go up to London’s National Art Gallery now to look at the Tudor paintings, many of which they don’t know who painted. But there’s something naive about these paintings, which are trying to be a bit clever. They were just making the most of the skills they had. And that’s very much how I go about what I do. I mean my skill set has changed but I’m making the most of it and working on it until it’s finished.” AV: “It’s good to look back into your memory. I had to write 20 short stories recently and everything was based on an experience from my teenage years. It’s a great time.” HD: “Through my 30s and early 40s I didn’t think about my teenage years at all. And then somewhere around 47 or 48,

“I HAD MY FIRST CHILD AT 20 AND DEEP DOWN I KNEW I COULD BE CREATIVE”

they became clear. I can remember whole days: what I was wearing, who I was with, and the music. It’s amazing.” AV: “Why did you call your Instagram account Unskilled-worker? Is that because you’re self-taught?” HD: “This whole thing of me painting … even my desk that I paint on at home I found in a junk shop and I bought it in the spring of the summer before I started painting. As they brought it into the house, my husband said: ‘What the hell are you going to do with that?’ And I said: ‘I don’t know, I’m just going to put it up in the spare room.’ And it went in the spare room underneath a very big window. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, I had no idea. But when I came back from Italy I had started painting, and I had a studio already set up.” AV: “Why did you start painting again at 48? What or who inspired you?” HD: “I don’t know. It was on a complete whim. There was no big plan. I walked past the art shop and I bought some cartridges of ink and some paper, not very much. One day I’d been here about three or four weeks and I thought: ‘ Right, I’ll paint today.’ I was so angry about my skill set that I just couldn’t do what I wanted to do. But somebody here, one of the young friends of one of my kids, said: ‘You should go on Instagram.’ And I did, and I’d already taken a photo of the first painting and I put that up but I ripped it up. I ripped up nearly all the early ones out of frustration that I couldn’t express. But you know, the Instagram account was always there. I’d set it up two years previously because I’d always loved the words ‘unskilled worker’. So the Instagram account was set up and it was so apt. I’d always told my friends to use unskilled worker as a DJ name; it’s such a good name. If you Google it, no-one uses it. And it was anonymous. Anyway, nobody used it as a DJ name: they thought it was rubbish!” AV: “Why the girls? Why the women? Why these almond eyes? Who is she? Is it you?” HD: “A lot of people think they do in some ways look like me but I can’t see that at all, because I don’t have big eyes and I think the skin colour comes from trying to come to terms with ageing. Do you remember when you were 15 looking in the mirror and the pleasure of having incredibly clear skin? Not even really knowing it but feeling something. I know I’m going right when I get that same feeling, very much an emotional thing. They’re more than just fashion drawings. To me, there’s something different happening. I can see why people relate to them as fashion drawings and relate to the Gucci work. But I think it’s coming to terms with that very, very small period that everyone hankers after, and it’s so fleeting, it’s gone before you were even in it, really. Also, I was a very troubled teenager, so the young women I paint seem to be slightly troubled. They’re in these beautiful clothes but they don’t look very happy.” AV: “Maybe that’s why we can relate to them, because maybe without even knowing it, all of that is in your work and it triggers something inside, it’s very skillful. You’ve painted some men earlier on and posted them on your Instagram. Do you see your work just being you? Do you have a plan or are you just kind of creating at the moment?” HD: “I have no plan. Everybody says you should have a strategy, I’ve never had a strategy for any part of my life. Everybody thinks that you should do this by this time but I’ve lived my life back to front. I had my first child at 20 and I think deep down I knew I could be creative when I had children because I’m obsessive. I paint six to 10 hours a day. I don’t see my friends very much, my life has completely changed. I couldn’t have dealt with that when I was having children. I don’t have a plan. I don’t know whether I should, whether I shouldn’t. I’m just doing what I like to do at this point and sometimes I do want to paint men. The men come out very differently. When it’s not based around fashion then I’m interested in skinheads and very troubled men because they were the men I was around as a teenager. I believe the more armour someone puts on the more distressed they are. It’s like protection.” AV: “Do you listen to music while you paint?” HD: “Oh, yeah. Massive part of it. I just listened to Radiohead’s new album on a loop for the last five weeks and I’m having a break … that album is Nick Drake, in a way. But then some really old stuff like ELO and America … and a British artist called Burial. I listen to him and Radiohead the most. When the painting is going well I dance. It’s energy. If your writing’s going well it’s the same energy as dancing.” AV: “Yes, I get that. What do you think is the most difficult thing you’ve experienced that was so difficult but you’re now tapping into either consciously or unconsciously when you’re painting?” HD: “When I was 20, my boyfriend that I’d been with since I was 15 died in a car crash and I was pregnant with his son. I was two months pregnant. So that changed the course of my life massively and I think at the time I just got on with it and it wasn’t until I was older that I felt very sad. Not sad as much for my loss but really sad for his loss and what he didn’t see. He was 21 when he died. I’ve never said that in an interview before. I think that comes out in my work. People definitely tap into that because the photographer Chris Lloyd said when he looked at my work it’s a longing for something that doesn’t exist anymore. I think that has a huge impact and when I paint men my friend thinks they look like my eldest son, but they don’t, they look like my boyfriend who died. They are very attached … The funny thing is they look like someone young. There’s a sort of juxtaposition going on but there’s also something older in them.” Continued on page 308