Helma Swinkels (right) with her mentor Marie-Louise Eriksen (left)

Our current featured artist is Helma Swinkels, an acrylic painter who creates under the name BiBi J. Her work draws on the land and seascapes of the West Coast, layering colour on colour until an atmospheric, abstract feeling emerges rather than an exact image.

Helma’s connection to creativity stretches back to childhood, when she loved to draw and paint. Over the years that same pull toward making things showed up everywhere: cooking from scratch, shaping the homes she lived in, dreaming up fundraising events for Ty Watson House, and building her own jobs and positions during her career in Holland and Germany. She later founded a community service co-op to run Pot Luck Ceramics and BiBi J’s, two artisan stores in Port Alberni raising money for local charities. Creativity, she says, lives inside all of us, and for an artist it becomes an urge to set it free. The urge to paint had always been there, but it wasn’t until she stepped back from volunteering in 2022 that she found the time to pick up the brush.

Helma has no formal art school training. In 2023 and 2024 she attended workshops on Vancouver Island to explore what kind of paintings she wanted to make, eventually settling on acrylics. Online courses with Danish painter Marie-Louise Eriksen pushed her in the right direction, and she credits that mentorship as an important influence. Vincent van Gogh’s colour and playful brushstrokes have long inspired her, as has J.M.W. Turner’s treatment of light.

Born in the Netherlands, Helma built her working career in Germany before following the love of her life to Port Alberni in 2006. She grew up in the woods, and nature has been her companion for most of her life, something that relaxes her, amazes her, and touches her deeply. Living near both the West and East Coasts of Vancouver Island, she feels fortunate to draw so directly on that natural beauty.

For Helma, staying loose is everything. She tries not to focus on the outcome of a painting, letting the paint lead her instead. She never works directly from an image but is inspired by one, hoping to reveal it the way it lives inside her rather than how it appears, giving each piece enough time to develop until it feels finished.

She is only beginning to find her own style, so she hasn’t yet built a formal series beyond the practice pages in her sketchbooks. Still, she feels a real sense of growth across her work. Above all, she hopes her paintings bring a pleasant feeling, inviting viewers to explore, to let their eyes wander, and to imagine walking through a meadow or standing at a coastline. Each viewer, she believes, will see something different, and that freedom of imagination is exactly what she hopes her work offers, enough to have people pause a while.

A few of Helma’s early pieces went to the Arts Council, where several sold, and she has also given paintings to friends and family who loved them, a reward she considers priceless. She hasn’t been deeply involved in the local arts community, mainly because her years here have already been full of active community work through Ty Watson House, Pot Luck Ceramics, and BiBi J’s. These days she is enjoying a quieter creative practice, though she is beginning to think about one day holding an exhibition with proceeds going toward a good cause.

When asked what advice she would give to emerging artists, Helma shared:

“You are never too young and never too old to be an artist. Never ever doubt yourself. Don’t focus on what the outcome will be, or on what people might think of your art. Each creation is your personal journey, enjoy it!”

Helma is based in Port Alberni, BC, and doesn’t currently have work on public display locally. She can be reached at helmaswinkels@hotmail.com.