Butterfly Matrix — The Work Behind the Work

The work

Butterfly Matrix Cristal

Title: Butterfly Matrix Cristal
Year: 2022
Medium: Oil on canvas with hand-cast epoxy-resin drops and crystals
Dimensions: 80 × 80 cm
Artist: Helen She
Technical collaboration: Boris Shestakov — silicone molds and casting
Materials and tools: Oil paint, epoxy resin, silicone molds made by the artists
Time to make: About three months
AI: None — painted, cast, polished and placed by hand

Close-up of the left wing covered in clear cast resin drops over blue paint. — Left wing: around three hundred cast drops, each one different.

Close-up of the right wing: cast resin crystals set into thick vertical strokes of blue oil paint. — Right wing: cast crystals set into thick vertical strokes of oil.

Butterfly Matrix Cristal seen from the side at an exhibition, showing the relief of the drops and crystals. — Seen from the side at the Butterfly Matrix exhibition in Collecorvino, 2023: the drops and crystals stand out from the surface.

Helen She standing beside Butterfly Matrix Cristal hanging on a white wall. — Helen She with the finished work, 2022.

The story

Dew on one wing, crystal on the other

Butterflies have been one of my recurring subjects for years. To me they are the clearest image of transformation, and in my Butterfly Matrix series every butterfly lives in two worlds at once: one wing belongs to nature, the other to “the matrix”, the same form rebuilt as structure and light.

Cristal began with an ordinary morning. If you look at a butterfly early in the day, its wings are covered in tiny drops of dew, each one catching the light in its own way. Nature does this effortlessly. I wanted to find out what it takes to do it by hand.

I painted the butterfly in oil on canvas: a deep blue figure on a warm orange ground, with the right wing built up in thick vertical strokes that read almost like a digital texture. Then came the part that took most of the three months the work required. Every drop on the left wing, around three hundred of them, and every crystal on the right wing was cast in epoxy resin, in silicone molds that my husband Boris and I made ourselves. Boris solved the technical side of the casting. The underside of every drop and every crystal then had to be polished by hand, and together we fixed each one to the canvas, one by one, with the same epoxy resin. No two drops are the same.

The two wings tell one story. The dew is the living world: fragile, temporary, perfect. The crystals are what that beauty becomes when it passes into the matrix, sharper and more structured, but still made of light. Beauty is fragile, yet it does not disappear. It changes form.

No AI was involved in making this work: everything you see was painted, cast, polished and placed by hand.

— Helen She

Close-up of Butterfly Matrix Cristal in low sunlight: domed clear drops over the blue left wing, cast crystals casting long shadows on the right wing. — Two wings, one story: the drops of the living world on the left, the crystals of the matrix on the right.

Process

From canvas to cast crystal

01 · Painting
Helen painted the butterfly in oil on canvas: a deep blue figure on a warm orange ground, the right wing built up in thick vertical strokes.
02 · Molds
Silicone molds for the drops and the crystals were made by hand, with Boris Shestakov working out the technical side.
03 · Casting
Every drop — around three hundred on the left wing — and every crystal on the right wing was cast in epoxy resin. No two drops are the same.
04 · Polishing
The underside of each drop and each crystal was polished by hand so it would sit on the painted surface.
05 · Setting
Helen and Boris fixed every element to the canvas, one by one, with the same epoxy resin.

A white tray full of clear cast resin drops beside the orange-painted canvas. — Casting: a tray of clear resin drops made for Cristal.

Clear cast drops of many different sizes laid out in rows on white paper. — The drops laid out one by one — every one a different size and shape.

Clear drops arranged over the painted blue wing on the orange canvas. — Setting: the drops arranged over the painted wing.

Studio footage. The clips are silent.

Studio footage, 2022: the painted wings, the cast drops laid out on the left wing, and a cast crystal being fixed in place.

Boris Shestakov fixing cast drops to the left wing.

The finished painting in daylight.

Helen She's hands on the canvas: with tweezers she places a line of tiny clear drops along the edge of the blue wing. — Work in progress, August 2022: Helen She placing the first small drops along the edge of the wing with tweezers.

Boris Shestakov pressing cast drops onto the painted left wing of the canvas. — Boris Shestakov setting the cast drops, 2022.

The series

Butterfly Matrix, 2018–2026

Every butterfly in the series is split between two states: one wing rooted in the living world, the other rebuilt as “the matrix” — the structured order through which we increasingly see nature. Over the years the matrix side has taken many forms: thick vertical strokes, folk ornament, stained glass, cast resin and, most recently, a grid of hand-painted pixels.

Did you know that some butterflies only live a few days? When I found out about it, there was great surprise and sadness. It was so ephemeral and felt beautiful. The beauty of butterflies is ephemeral, so if you don’t capture that moment, it will soon disappear. Thus, the Butterfly Matrix collection was born.
At some point, everything transforms into another form. So on the one hand it shows the butterfly in a natural way and on the other hand it shows as if it were a new dimension, the matrix. In doing so, I keep her essence, beauty intact. It doesn’t disappear anywhere, it just melts into the matrix. This is my beauty philosophy.
— Helen She, from a magazine interview

Butterfly Matrix, 2018Oil on canvas, 119 × 99 cmAn early work in the series: the butterfly suspended between the living world and the matrix.

Butterfly Matrix Cristal, 2022Oil on canvas with hand-cast epoxy-resin drops and crystals, 80 × 80 cmDew on one wing, crystal on the other — the work documented on this page.

Butterfly Matrix Khokhloma, 2023Oil and acrylic on canvas, 100 × 100 cmOne wing draws on Khokhloma, the traditional Russian folk ornament; the other turns into the matrix.

Butterfly Matrix Arlecchino, 2023Oil on canvas, 100 × 100 cmA harlequin wing of bold, colorful shapes beside its matrix counterpart.

Butterfly Matrix Duality, 2025Oil, acrylic and gesso on canvas, 100 × 100 cmOne wing built like a stained-glass matrix, the other melting into expressive strokes.

From crystal to pixel

In Butterfly Matrix Pixel (2026) the matrix wing is no longer cast — it is painted. The outline and grid were marked out by hand in pencil, and every square was then painted individually in oil directly onto the canvas, with no stencil, template or digital transfer.

The idea came from my children. They have been playing Minecraft for many years, and one day they asked me a simple question: “Why are there no butterflies?” Butterflies have long been one of the recurring subjects in my art, and in my Matrix works I build images from hundreds of small geometric elements. So I decided to bring these two worlds together — and to answer their question in paint. I painted every square by hand, one at a time. That mattered to me: the painting looks digital, but nothing about how it was made is.
— Helen She

Helen She seated in front of a large black canvas: one wing of a pixel butterfly is painted in green squares, the rest is still a pencil grid. — Butterfly Matrix Pixel in progress, 2026: the painted squares of the first wing beside the pencil grid that guides the rest.

More from the series

A selection of further works, 2019–2025.

The artist

Helen She

Helen She is a Russian-born painter who lives and works in Loreto Aprutino, in Italy’s Abruzzo region.

She grew up in a small provincial town and, as a child, dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. Convinced she could not draw, she took another path: she moved to Moscow on her own, studied journalism and then public relations, and spent nine years building a life far from the studio.

Art came to her through her husband, Boris Shestakov. The couple met near the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, and in 2015 a photographic work by Boris in which Helen appears was shown at the Hermitage: her first exhibition, before she had ever painted. When she told him she had never been able to draw, he answered that drawing is only a skill; what fills a painting is lived experience. In 2016 she finished her first oil painting.

Self-taught, she developed a “pixel style”: images built from small hand-painted blocks, with no more than three or four colors on a canvas. Its fullest expression is Butterfly Matrix, a series of around forty works in which the living form of a butterfly meets the grid of “the matrix”, made in oil, acrylic and hand-cast resin. Boris remains her closest supporter and collaborator, working alongside her on the technical side of her mixed-media pieces.

Since the family moved to Italy in 2020, she has held a solo exhibition in a museum space in Loreto Aprutino (2021), presented Butterfly Matrix at Tenuta del Priore and in a historic convent in Collecorvino as part of the town’s cultural programme (2023), and taken part in an exhibition in Tokyo (2023). Her paintings are in private collections in the United States, France, Germany and Mexico. In 2023 she founded Gallery Helen She.

A framed photograph of Helen with a dark painted band across her eyes, hanging in a museum hall beside other framed works. — State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, 2015: the photographic work by Boris Shestakov in which Helen appears.

Helen She standing by a well in a cloister courtyard, a blue butterfly painting displayed behind her. — In the cloister of the convent in Collecorvino during the Butterfly Matrix exhibition, 2023.

Helen She holding a large canvas with a blue butterfly on an orange ground. — With Transformation, 2025.

Helen She in a pink dress beside a pink and black butterfly painting hung on a brick wall. — With a Butterfly Matrix work, 2025.

Helen She leaning against a plaster wall next to a red and gold butterfly painting on a black ground. — With a red-and-gold Butterfly Matrix painting, 2025.

Exhibitions

Selected exhibitions

2025Art in BloomLoreto Aprutino, Italy — paintings shown on the historic walls of the town, spring
2023Exhibition in TokyoTokyo, Japan
2023Butterfly MatrixHistoric convent, Collecorvino, Italy — part of the cultural programme of the Comune di Collecorvino, 20–24 July
2023Butterfly MatrixTenuta del Priore, Collecorvino, Italy
2021Solo exhibitionMuseum space, Loreto Aprutino, Italy, 25 June – 4 July
2015State Hermitage MuseumSt Petersburg — a photographic work by Boris Shestakov in which Helen appears; her first exhibition

A vaulted brick hall with a cobbled floor; a blue and white painting hangs on the wall. — Solo exhibition in a museum space, Loreto Aprutino, 2021.

Helen She standing in front of one of her paintings under old wooden beams. — Helen She at her solo exhibition, Loreto Aprutino, 2021.

Helen She standing beside a large butterfly painting with a geometric wing. — Helen She at the Butterfly Matrix exhibition at Tenuta del Priore, 2023.

Exhibition poster: Mostra “Matrix butterflies”, Artista Helen She, Collecorvino, Convento, 20–24 luglio, over a detail of Butterfly Matrix Cristal. — Poster for the exhibition in the convent of Collecorvino, 20–24 July 2023.

A butterfly painting on a coral ground hanging beneath brick vaults and columns. — Under the vaults of the convent, Collecorvino, 2023.

A purple butterfly on a yellow ground hung in front of old frescoes. — Butterfly Matrix Gold among the frescoes of the convent, Collecorvino, 2023.

Helen She in the lit cloister arcade in the evening, beside a white butterfly work. — Helen She in the cloister on an evening of the exhibition, Collecorvino, 2023.

A vaulted brick corridor with frescoes; butterfly paintings hang along the passage. — Butterfly Matrix along the frescoed corridor of the convent, Collecorvino, 2023.

A pink butterfly painting set into a niche in an old brick wall. — Art in Bloom: a painting set into the historic walls of Loreto Aprutino, 2025.