Helen Downie is an artist but is almost certainly better known by her Instagram username @UnskilledWorker, where 280,000 followers keep up to date with her paintings.
I am one of those followers and from the beginning I was mesmerised by an ever present elegiac quality in her paintings that seeped from their pores. A longing for a time that once might have been, full of melancholy.
In the first days of 2016, hypnotised by the charisma of UnskilledWorker I emailed Helen and asked if I could come and see her. Maybe I could film her, maybe I could photograph her? Or maybe we could just drink coffee, eat Welsh Rarebit and chat?
The date we made was 11th January 2016, the day David Bowie died.
