Helen Sawyer descends on both sides of her family from New England seafaring stock. Her father, Welles Moses Sawyer, was also a painter. She spent a number of her adolescent years in Spain with her family. She attended public school in Yonkers and graduated from Miss Master's School in Dobbs Ferry, NY in 1918. She studied at the National Academy of Design (1919-21), at the Hawthorne summer school in Provincetown, MA, at the Johansen summer school and at the Art Students League. In 1925 she married Jerry Farnsworth whom she met while both were students in Hawthorne's summer school. They settled in North Truro, MA where they taught and later conducted a winter art school in Sarasota, Florida. Her first one person show was at Milch Gallery in 1940. The subject matter of her painting includes the circus, landscape, marines, flowers and portraits.
