Sitting by the beautiful Suffolk coast with paintbrush and watercolours in hand, few would place talented artist Helen Atkinson Wood as a character from one of the most popular comedy series ever shown on television.

Sitting by the beautiful Suffolk coast with paintbrush and watercolours in hand, few would place talented artist Helen Atkinson Wood as a character from one of the most popular comedy series ever shown on television.

As she proudly oversaw her first art exhibition, you may have forgiven her for wanting to leave talk about her role as the bawdy Mrs Miggins in Blackadder the Third to another day.

But for Helen, who shares her time between the Suffolk village of Blythburgh and the hustle and bustle of London, the contrasts in her life make things all the more interesting.

"I celebrate Blackadder. It will forever be a comedy classic and it's a privilege to have worked on it," said Helen, who was showing off about 50 of her watercolour creations during a weekend exhibition at Walberswick village hall.

"I love the contrast in my life. I have to do everything else to time and to a deadline, but what I love about painting is just doing it in the time it takes.

"I spend a lot of time with people, but when I paint it's a time to spend on my own."

While Helen, who is married to comedy writer and director John Morton, enjoys painting wherever she travels in the world, Suffolk has provided the inspiration behind many of her paintings.

"The Suffolk landscape lends itself so perfectly to watercolour painting," she said.

"The Suffolk coast is captivating; I love the sea and the countryside. The combination of this keeps me coming back. Acting is a very time-consuming profession, but I feel at home in Suffolk.

"I first came here about 20 years ago when my parents were on holiday. If you like somewhere you make an effort to go there."

Helen's impressive CV reveals how she went to Oxford University to study fine art, but her determination to have a stab at acting led to her first meeting with Rowan Atkinson - an association that would help her land a role in Blackadder in the future.

While one of Helen's first jobs was a rather unglamorous role touring Coventry in a van as part of a theatre in education group, one of her earliest big breaks was in the comedy radio show Radio Active, which became the inspiration behind the award-winning TV programme KYTV.

Helen met Ben Elton at the Edinburgh Festival, which led to a close association between the pair on a productions he had written - The Young Ones, Happy Families and Silly Cow, her first performance on the West End stage.

In the late 1980s, when Elton collaborated with Richard Curtis on Blackadder the Third, they created the role of Mrs Miggins for Helen.

In recent years, Helen has moved into TV presenting and travel writ-ing, particularly involved with food programmes such as Good Food Live.

She has also been a guest on shows like Call My Bluff and Have I Got News for You, while her latest project had seen her join forces with journalist John Simpson to host Radio 4 travel quiz Where in the World?

Helen's passion for watercolour painting emerged after she was invited onto the Channel 4 show Celebrity Watercolour Challenge about four years ago.

Since then she has joined a watercolours' course in Walberswick by Chris and Wendy Sinclair, a couple who she describes as "inspirational".

"It's a very gentle group and so different to the world I inhabit in London, said Helen, who completed her work for the exhibition over four years.