In Helli Luck’s painting Journey Home, five Roseate Spoonbills glide over the marsh as the sun sets in the distance. The fading light reflects differently off every element in the work: the birds’ pink and white feathers, the river of water that meanders through green and gold marsh grass, and orange and yellow clouds against the faintest hint of blue sky. The birds are headed home after a day of fishing, and it’s nearly time for the viewer to call it a day, too. If you’ve been lucky enough to witness a scene like this in the Lowcountry, you remember exactly how you felt when you saw it. In her work, the artist aims to bring those memories back.
Luck, a transplant to Pawleys Island, South Carolina, via Nashville and London, has been capturing magic moments as far back as she can remember. “I was about 5 years old when I realized I was an artist,” she says. “I loved to draw and carried a little sketchbook around with me everywhere.” When she was 14, her work was accepted into a show that toured Europe, further fueling her creative fire.
After graduating from the Saint Martins School of Art in London with a degree in graphic design, Luck founded an advertising agency and worked as an art director for Saatchi and Saatchi, a multinational ad agency with offices worldwide.
Her global accounts included British Airways, Toshiba, Garuda Indonesia, Riva and Gucci, which took her to Australia, Hong Kong and Europe. “Traveling exposed me to new cultures and art forms. I spent a lot of time in cities all over Europe, visiting museums and studying the old masters. I especially loved the impressionists in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris,” she says.
Eventually, Luck switched careers and trained to be a chef in France. She sees plenty of parallels in the joys of cooking and creating art. “Cooking is an art form. There’s beauty in plating something and bringing joy to people’s lives, and I got to work in some really lovely French restaurants,” she says.
And then life took her to Nashville, where she began oil painting. She continued her art education, studying with renowned artists Nancy Guzik, Daniel Keys, Ron Hicks and the extraordinarily original and diverse Quang Ho.
For the last seven years, Luck has indulged in two of her passions: living and painting by the sea. She is an impressionist, interpreting how a scene makes her feel with loose, suggestive brushstrokes that capture the light. “My work is all about the light,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be a particular subject. I painted a lot in France because the light has a particular look. Here, I love how the light moves across the marsh and the birds and falls on the landscape. It’s almost sculptural in the way it cuts and bends. That’s what inspires me.”
Luck occasionally paints en plein air but prefers to work in her living room in front of a large window. She starts with thin, washy layers to sketch the layout of a painting, then adds tighter and tighter layers to give the viewer more information. “But not too much because I don’t want to lose the fluid movement,” she says. “Recently, I started glazing, where you add more layers to add atmosphere. I enjoy working outside but like being in the studio with air-conditioning and music.”
Even though Luck loves her Pawleys Island home, she still loves to travel. “I love seeing beautiful things and experiencing new places,” she says. “As an artist, it’s lovely to travel because it’s so inspiring. I see new color combinations everywhere. Even sitting in a restaurant, I’m inspired. I also love the ocean, fishing and everything to do with being near the sea. I walk the beach, and seeing how the light falls on the water is inspiring.” She often takes her paints with her and ships back wet canvases when she travels.
Luck also still appreciates food, cooking and painting restaurant scenes. “I still love painting French waiters and restaurants,” she says. “I’m a foodie; I love wine, Champagne and great food. But something is striking about the way the light hits a waiter in white against a white tablecloth, how it comes through a restaurant, and what it does to shapes and colors. My favorite restaurant to paint is the Restaurant du Musée d’Orsay. It’s a beautiful restaurant, and such beautiful light comes through the big windows.”
After a lifetime of art, Luck is most interested in learning more. “I’ve been an oil painter for 15 years, which, relatively speaking, isn’t that long. It’s the hardest form of art; it takes a lot of time on the canvas to see improvements,” she says. “There are so many things you have to get right; it’s like a chess game where you have to plan far ahead. It can go wrong really quickly. It’s a long journey, but I get inspiration from seeing people around me get better. There are so many great artists, but Quang Ho is such a genius, every brushstroke is beautiful; that’s something I am striving for. I’m also still inspired by the old impressionists, such as Monet, also John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla and Anders Zorn. It’s exciting to start a painting and hope to see improvements. If not, you do another one until it’s right.”
Luck is painting large right now; her ideal canvas size is 3-by-4-feet because it’s big enough to allow her to be expressive but small enough to step back and see everything. When she sells a painting locally, she likes to deliver it herself. “It means a lot to me that someone would want to look at my painting every day. It’s a huge honor, and I really like to meet people and see where the painting will hang,” she says. “A lot of my work leaves South Carolina. People who visit here love having something to remember the scenery or the perfect plate of oysters on the perfect day.”
Luck also still paints fine dining scenes, including glasses of bubbling, spoonbill-pink Champagne against crisp white linens or the iconic sidewalk cafés of Paris. Other works in her oeuvre are snapshots of moments when the light was perfect: a cat sleeping on a porch step, its body and legs blissfully relaxed; a field of bright sunflowers; a plover dabbling in the blue surf; a proud cow and her calf; a shrimp boat on its mooring in the evening light.
Luck’s work is available in South Carolina at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, Perspective Gallery in Mount Pleasant, and Lowcountry Artists Gallery and Wynsum Antiques & Interiors in Charleston. You can see her work in Florida at Stellers Gallery in Jacksonville and An Apartment in Paris in Seaside.
“I keep saying I’m going to take a break, but I never feel like I’m working,” Luck says. “If I have a spare day, I’m going to paint. I’m going to do this until I’m really old.” *
Robin Howard is a freelance writer in Charleston. See more of her work at robinhowardwrites.com.
