Portraits
John Helgeson
Angela's Ribbon

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John Helgeson was born in 1931 in North Dakota and worked for many years as an advertising art director in California. He now works exclusively in the digital medium. His earlier conventially-drawn prints have appeared in many group shows in museums and exhibits throughout the US.

As for his current digital work, he writes, "So believe it or not, I draw with a mouse [in Photoshop] which I have become very adept at using. I start out with a rough sketch on my computer and build from there. I make extensive use of layers which I find to be the most rewarding to the art I make. Textures and layers are my strong points, and it takes a long time to put the many variations into my memory bank so that their use becomes rote, but still my images take a vast amount of time to finish. I'm very picky about when I call an image finished. And still I will sometimes go back and change one little thing in an image that is nagging at me. But isn't that the beauty of digital art?

"I have been working with digital art for a decade and still find it to be the most fascinating medium that I know.... The artists I admire most are De Kooning, Franz Kline, Goya, Edvard Munch and Richard Diebenkorn."