Featured Acquisition: Helen (Barchilon) Redman, “Lilli”

Helen (Barchilon) Redman (b. 1940)

Lilli, 1964

Oil and collage on canvas

62 x 46 inches

Signed (“Barchilon”), titled and dated verso

Provenance:

Estate of James and Marilynn Milmoe, Golden, CO

Helen Redman, MFA, is an internationally exhibited figurative painter, mixed media artist,  teacher, feminist commentator and grandmother, exploring  personal identity, gender stereotypes, health issues, and cycles of life in the expressive tradition of Alice Neel and Frida Kahlo.

For over six decades, her work has centered on life passages — including pregnancy, mothering, illness, healing, and the death of a child, and on various stages of her children’s growth. Redman, who was born in 1940, has focused in recent years on exploring women’s journey through menopause and old age and contradicting the negativity provoked by aging in a sexist and youth oriented culture.

Redman was previously known as Helen Barchilon (married to Jacques Barchilon from 1960-1973).

She has taught at the University of Colorado and the University of Iowa, and has lectured and exhibited her art across the United States.

She has been an active force for gaining support and recognition for women in the Arts, co-founding Front Range Women in the Visual Arts in Boulder, Colorado in  1974 and  the San Diego Women’s Caucus for the Arts in 1992.  Redman is also part of the first online digital archive dedicated solely to feminist art at the Brooklyn Museum.

Redman’s art is included in the following permanent collections: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Frost Art Museum, FIU, Miami; San Diego Museum of Art, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, University of Colorado Collections, Boulder; Women’s Museum of California, San Diego, Cornell Fine Art Museum, Winter Park, Florida, and Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania.

biographical sources: helenredman.com, Brooklyn Museum, dontshutup2021