Helen Valerie Burnett was born in Scotland and spent her formative years there. She credits her passion for metal to the many train journeys over the beautiful Tay and Forth Bridges when she was a child. Although she has spent most of her life living in France, USA and Belgium, this curiosity about metal and stone was an important visual reference and pleasure from childhood. Whether it was in churches, architecture, ornamental gates, or in museums, each country lived in was a hunter’s bounty.

She trained for five years in figurative sculpture using clay and bronze in Brussels, Belgium. Then in London, she completed the Sculptural Diploma at Heatherley's School of Fine Art, where she learned to carve stone and cut and weld metal. Her metal work was influenced by Caro, Smith, Paolozzi, Munoz, and Chillida. She is fascinated by found objects and l’Art Brut. Her treasures may well be someone else’s junk, but in the random and the lost, she finds objects to transform and work with wherever she goes.

Objects were found in a field in France, in Brixton, Wandsworth and Belgravia. She cuts metal to help the pieces find a voice, and paints in strong colours to make them beautiful and to give them humour. Her work with stone is a process of intuition and discovery, deeply meditative but with strong structural elements.

^{Helen Valerie Burnett sells internationally with work in private collections in the UK, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA.}