"It is the energy of life that the wave possesses more than anything else," Helle replies to my observations. In its most intense moments the energy is expressed with curves suggesting the meeting of the very first light with the archetypal wave. In Helle Tzalopoulou-Barnstone's work nothing is cut off from the whole. The only element that is ostracized is darkness itself. Light, as it falls on the water becomes compressed and condensed. You might say that the old contradiction between light and darkness has been transposed. While in this particular world something is happening incessantly, like a bridging from one element to another, from one sense to another: sight - touch or "a transparency I hear." Elements of primordial nature and of human nature, before history, mysterious workings "in the depths of things." But also perhaps an opening to some future, with the exaltation of the wave in its upward motion toward light.

 From art critic Lydia Finkelstein:

All [her] pastels or acrylics on paper exude the sensuousness of a season in full, whether it is the summer light in a Greek olive grove, or an Indiana hillside ripe with autumn corn husks.
       Her gift is the ability to treat both subjects — so far apart in their cultural heritage and understanding — as something uniquely understood, beautiful, and to be internalized in the artist's visual memory bank.

Barnstone is a master colorist who can work effectively with difficult tonalities within a single color, such as green, and not get the tones muddy or mixed down to an emptiness within a composition. Her greens are grayed olives, terre vertes, intense phthalos, yellowed greens, greens shot with white or pink, to create a kind of incandescent light that seems to come off the page. You can literally see the light and feel the warmth on your skin.