Deanna Phoenix Selene: Can you share a bit about the stages of your artistic process? Your work feels so multi-layered. It is clear a great amount of thought goes into cultivating each piece. What is your favorite stage of your art-making?
Hélène Delmaire: Like many artists I think I love the excitment of the “aha!” moment when the idea comes to you, so clearly, at the most random moment. It feels like it pops out of nowhere, but it is really the final stage of a long, quiet, gestation that the artist is often not even aware of. Then you find common threads to all your works, without really having thought them through before. They are a part of you but you don’t know it until you see them. I also like to think they are a part of a bigger whole, and that is what I prefer about art-making. Linking the personal and the universal. Trying to bring to the eyes of others what you feel in your bones is important, to make them see themselves as they might not have before.
— Hélène Demaire, interview, combustus