Helen Trevaskis installs new work at The Writers’ Block
These seemingly ordinary and everyday scenes, which are, in fact, extraordinary, were created by Cornwall-based illustrator and writer Helen Trevaskis for The Writers’ Block in 2025.
The images stem from a body of work developed to illustrate Hope for Cornwall, a book Helen was commissioned to write in 2024 about Cornwall’s housing crisis.
In the book, and on these walls, they aim to remind us that we all live under the same sky so what affects one of us affects us all. To reinforce a message of hope, ‘because even during the roughest storm or the dullest day there is blue behind the grey’ and to create a sense of place that does not rely on the usual visual cliches of Cornwall.
Helen Trevaskis is a writer, illustrator and researcher who is drawn to tougher topics and believes that books and art can change the world.
Before returning to Cornwall to pursue a career in words and pictures, Helen worked as a researcher, innovation consultant, creative facilitator and behaviour change consultant, work which took her to some of the poorest corners of the world.
Over the years, as well as studying Illustration (Falmouth) she has also studied Social Anthropology (Edinburgh) and Creative Writing (Sussex). All these influences inform her work today which includes creating site-specific art works, book and book cover commissions, creative projects where the arts are a vehicle for change, contributing to exhibitions.
At The Writers’ Block, Helen Trevaskis has created work where the atmosphere can shift with the weather. The imagery is drawn from Cornwall’s skies—but not the typical postcard views of sunlit harbours and sailing boats. Instead, this is Cornwall as it’s lived: crows balanced on telephone wires, looming skies, the hush before a storm, or the sudden lift of a bright cloud in an open sky.
“Cornwall is famed for its skies. The sky is also accessible to all in Cornwall in a way that the sea and coast (other things we’re famed for) are not. And it provides the opportunity to bring in other characters – birds, rooftops, communications masts and telegraph wires. Choosing the sky metaphor provided the potential for creating a shifting mood to sit alongside the unfolding narrative, and for communicating more directly about the relationship between the natural and the manmade in Cornwall, an area of concern when it comes to housing and house building.”Helen Trevaskis
It’s a quiet, visual poetry that invites us to see the beauty—and the resilience—in the ordinary. It becomes a prompt for reflection, imagination, and creative writing. In a space dedicated to stories, her work is a nuanced contrast to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Learn more about Helen and The Hope for Cornwall project on here website
Follow Helen on Instagram
