Frank Auerbach, maybe one of the best painters of our time, paints obsessively. In his studio in North London, where he works since 1954, he loudly walks up and down, talks in himself, turns the canvas he's working on upside down, suddenly moves forward and throws some paint on the canvas. Like a madman Auerbach paints, pushes, pulls and smears his inimitable paintings to great heights.
Helma Michiels also paints in another state of consciousness. "In a trance" she herself once called it. Her admired example Auerbach: "when you are really working, you don't have any consciousness left to be aware of yourself".
Michiels (Hapert, 1964) has more lines connected to the British painter: she also limits herself to one subject. Where Auerbach has indulged for a long time in portraiture (and later developed interest in architecture) Michiels has focussed on the female nude.
She paints these women in an inaccessible way. They stand there present, mostly in the middle of the canvas, and can never be moved from it anymore. With risky wipes, applied to the linen in high speed, they form the heart of the painting. Sometimes hardly recognizable as female figures. Due to the many wanderings the brush has made: they make the women whirl all over the canvas. In blue, yellow, red and brown shades they meander from left to right and back again: an explosion of movement. It is a beautiful hymn to woman ànd to painting.

Whirlings
Particularly in the small works (about thirty by twenty centimeters) Michiels manages to handle the paint in such a way that, in spite of all the whirlings and thicknesses, it is turned into a magnificent harmony with the image that was intended. The larger canvases every now and then leave something to be desired; it seems that the artist loses grip a little bit. The meagre surfaces make the canvas turn over and endanger the cohesion.
Surprising is the work "Blue horse" from 2005. In this work stands, next to a running or dancing woman, something that - although minimally indicated - unmistakably is a horse. This is also painted with guts; it looks as if the paint was dragged over the canvas. Really a work from someone who paints "rather uninhibitedly". With impressive results.