A commissioned portrait is a perfect way of celebrating a milestone moment. A parent’s big birthday, a child about to leave home, or someone you love at a turning point in their life.
My commissions start with a conversation. I ask you to bring an object that matters to you, because talking about it tends to move us past polite chat into something more real. Likeness is important, of course, but it’s your story that makes a portrait yours. In my paintings, that story becomes pattern.
Every portrait finds its own way to tell someone’s story. The pattern, symbols and detail come from listening: to the places that have shaped you, and the people and things that mean something to you. One client commissioned a portrait of herself as a gift for her husband, to mark their anniversary and a difficult year that had changed them both.
The pattern behind her comes from an eighteenth-century fragment of indigo-printed cotton in the Charleston Museum, a few miles from where JJ lives. Indigo was grown and processed in South Carolina by enslaved people, shipped to England to dye cloth like this, and then sold back to America. I chose it after a conversation in which JJ and I talked about how divided things feel now. The fabric belongs to a long and painful history in that part of the country. Today, Gullah Geechee communities on St Helena Island and Sapelo Island are growing and dyeing with indigo again, and their work felt like a reason not to lose heart. I wanted both of those things in the painting.
Thank you for painting my wife (JJ). When I opened the package from DHL I had no idea what I was about to reveal.
When I pulled it from the box and unveiled the painting, I was amazed, honoured, and grateful.
The painting is beautiful and when I read your message out loud I cried. It was such a nice message and it meant so much that you included it. We will eventually do another painting of her as we were both inspired.
Thank you again for such a beautiful piece of art. We will forever cherish it.
Mike, South Carolina.
If this sounds like the kind of portrait you’d treasure, please get in touch. I’d love to talk.
You can find FAQs here.
Next steps....
Would you like to know more first? My brochure explains how a commission works, from our first conversation to the finished painting.
Ready to talk?
Tell me a little about who you have in mind and what you’d like to celebrate.
Email me at helen@helenbainbridge.co.uk
or call 0044 (0) 7590 068024
and we’ll arrange a first conversation by phone or Zoom.
THE PATTERN CHRONICLES
where patterns travel and tell stories
A monthly essay tracing how decorative motifs move across cultures and centuries - with studio notes and glimpses of work in progress alongside.
NEW WORK
Something new in the studio
A new series of paintings exploring the patterns girls inherit.
DRAWN TO THE BORO
TEn portraits, ten stories of migration
A project of ten large-scale portraits of Middlesbrough residents nominated by their communities, each connected to a story of movement - exhibiting in 2027.
