Helen Kuster

About Helen Kuster

Helen loves the design elements of historical and traditional decorative art. With a background in drafting and technical graphics she enjoys the design process as much as the painting.

Born and educated in England she concentrated on Art and Technical Drawing. At the age of 16 in 1969 her family emigrated to Australia and she chose to leave school for an apprenticeship in an aerial mapping firm in Melbourne, training as a cartographic draughtswoman. She quickly excelled in freehand contour maps, she couldn't believe she was being paid to sit and draw all day long.

The trip over to Australia started more than a new life on the other side of the world, she also met her future husband on the boat. He was emigrating from Switzerland. In 1974 she was first introduced to Traditional Folk Art while living in Switzerland for a year. Fascinated with the painted buildings and amazed to watch a school friend of her husbands painting flowers on a cupboard in his farmhouse kitchen in Bern.

In 1981 she was living in Brunei, a sultanate on the island of Borneo. With 3 year-old twin boys and a servant to help look after them she finally had the opportunity to try her hand at Swiss Folk Art. Throwing herself into it she ended up demonstrating and eventually selling her work.

On returning to Australia Helen returned to work. With finely developed penmanship and no cartographic work in Adelaide, she turned to technical graphics where she continued until computers started to take over her work. By this time she had started to paint again-on her furniture!

So in 1992 she gave up the drafting work, opened a studio and began painting and teaching full time. Helen has continued to paint nearly everyday, teaching classes and workshops around Australia, New Zealand and England. She now concentrates on teaching workshops with the occasional calligraphy course to fit in with her travel teaching and has introduced design classes to her studio to encourage advanced painters to design original projects.

She is constantly researching and spends time on trips to Europe to broaden her knowledge of Traditional Folk Art , ceramics from Italy and the Decorative Arts Movement in England. These design interests led her into painting ceramics and using her own designs for textiles. She has been competing over a number of years winning many gold medals and several design awards and has had 7 exhibitioins of her work in community and fine art galleries.

Helen has published a book and has over 150 design packs. Through these and the many workshops she has taught she has become well known for her precise designs and fine stroke work, resulting in requests for special painted commissions.