Helen K. Burros
 

    Helen Klenetsky Burros was born just before World War II in a small, Polish village surrounded by forests and marsh. Her environment resembled the early 1800s. There was no electricity; her home was lit by candles and kerosene lamps. Transport was by horse and wagon. There were no telephones, radios, or cinema. As a child in Poland Helen K. Burros created patterns with fragments of colored glass that she found in the earth. 

    When she was still a child, she and her family immigrated to Brooklyn, NY, and she was immersed in the Twentieth Century. While in grammar school, she spent many happy hours painting and drawing at the Brooklyn Children's Museum. She attended an art high school. Later, she studied at the Art Students League, then studied with and assisted Reuben Tam at the Brooklyn Museum of Fine Arts. She also worked and studied at the University of Arkansas, C.W. Post, and Long Island University. For several years she was president of the Northport, B.J. Spoke Gallery in Huntington, New York. 

    In subsequent years and locations, Helen K. Burros became an expert potter while retaining her love for painting in oils, acrylics, and mixed media. Her incredible artworks display countless artistic styles including abstraction, impressionism, cubism, and realism. Regardless of the medium that Helen K. Burros uses, her roots in Poland, experiences of the Warsaw Ghetto, and her awareness of the Holocaust are major components of her extensive body of work, either directly in subject matter or indirectly by emotional tonality. 

    She currently lives and works in Huntington, Long Island.