Artist's Biography
Born in 1952, Helen Mirkil is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), both the Certificate and MFA programs, as well as the BFA program of the University of Pennsylvania (studio classes at PAFA).
She is a recipient of the British American Travel Grant through the Wales/Philadelphia Exchange to work and live for two months and to teach in Wales. Her Penllyn Series landscapes have been exhibited in a solo show at Walter Wickiser Gallery in NYC. Landscape painting also earned her the Valerie Lamb Smith Painting Residency (co-sponsored by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). Mirkil's landscapes also earned first prize for landscape, two alternate years, in "Scenes of the Schuylkill". Her terra cotta sculpture “Senorita Rosalinda” was juried into the National Arts Club in NYC.
Mirkil's figurative “Conversations” series went on the road in a traveling solo exhibition starting at Mary Washington College Galleries in Fredericksburg, VA, and continued on at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art in Collegeville, PA. Works in oil and on paper have been shown in two National Midyear Exhibitions at the prestigious Butler Institute of American Art.
Mirkil’s work is in the collections of: the American Academy of Arts and Letters in NYC, Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Bryn Mawr College Library Collection, Chatham Hall, James A. Michener Art Museum, Villanova University Art Collection, University of Mary Washington Galleries, Monmouth Comprehensive School in Wales, U.K., the Teaching Collection of PAFA, and the Woodmere Art Museum.
Helen Mirkil is also a poet. Her collection of poems entitled Sower on the Cliffs: poems and drawings was published by BookArts Press. Her second poetry collection, From the Whirlwind, is being published by Wind and Water Press.
Helen and her husband Brian Peterson live in Wilmington, NC. They are blessed-to-overflowing to live in town where they are near family. Mirkil's spacious studio is at theArtWorks, a converted warehouse that houses Gallery Verrazzano, 50 artist's studios and other cultural spaces.
