Helen McLean is best-known as a painter; she has shown in several cities and has painted portraits of authors Margaret Laurence, Michael Ondaatje, and Sarah Sheard. Previously, she published Sketching From Memory: A Portrait of My Mother (Oberon Books, 1994) and Of All Summers (Women's Press, 1998), and contributed to Wrestling With the Angel (Red Deer College Press, 2000). She lives with her husband in Toronto.
Writer and artist Helen McLean was born in Toronto where she now lives. She has exhibited her paintings across Canada, and has been a teacher and a journalist. She is the author of Sketching from Memory (Oberon Press), Of All the Summers (Women's Press), and the acclaimed memoir Details From a Larger Canvas (Dundurn Press).