Helen Denerley is one of the UK’s leading wildlife artists, best known for the animals she sculpts from scrap metal. She has had many major exhibitions (four solo shows at Kilmorack) and has large works in public spaces throughout the UK, including a ‘tree of life’ for Trees for Life (Dungreggan 2023,) Edinburgh’s ‘Dreaming Spires’ Giraffes at the top of Leith Walk, and international commissions in Japan, Hong Kong and South Georgia.
For Denerley, the creative process begins with meticulously observed drawing and ends with a metal sculpture pulsing with life and movement. This is not rendered in solid form but realised through negative spaces, filled with the spirit of the animal and the viewer’s imagination.
Denerley graduated from Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen in 1977. Since then she has lived and worked from her studio on a remote hillside in Northeast Scotland.
For many years, Helen Denerley has worked from her scrap pile in rural Aberdeenshire, expressing a passion for the natural world and an excitement in the new uses she finds for the things we throw away. Denerley’s latest solo exhibition in Salvage re-examines our relationship with the natural world and its resources.