mARTin hill's website

Artist's Biography

Born in Birmingham, England, I came to Canada in March of 1948 with my family. From an early age, I took a great deal of interest in art. At the age of ten & eleven, I was enrolled in art lessons at East York High School (oil painting) every Saturday, fall and spring sessions. Leaning towards the arts, my education was at Danforth Tech High School in the commercial art program. In 1958, I started my forty-two year career as a photoengraver in the rotogravure printing industry. In 2000 I began painting again and since moving to Qualicum Beach BC in 2003, I have participated in the Sunday Painters Exhibition. In Oct. 2005 I displayed thirteen pieces of my art for thirty days at The Old School House in the Volunteer Gallery. I Participated in three Grand Prix d' Art, and I work as a volunteer artist in the gift shop studio at The Old School House in Qualicum Beach.

In 2006, I became a member of The Federation Of Canadian Artists,  (Active member) and have been judicated into shows.

ARTISTS' STATEMENT

Presently, I am using watercolours to express a unique technique that controls colour, depth, shadow and perspective in a hologram-like mosaic. This technique is unusual and rather an extreme use of watercolours because I do not use the traditional approach of starting with a wash and then detailing. I begin a painting by working on raw stock without a wash and launch right into the subject's detail, painting each mosaic cell separately. Some paintings finish with over a thousand segments that appear as a whole, like a hollogram, when viewed from a distance.

Detail within naturally occuring phenomena such as the way light strikes upon a mountain, reflects off water, plays on a forest or even bounces off buildings inspires me. Actually, it's how light is absorbed, reflected and refracted within any subject matter that fascinates me. As I visualize a scene, my artist's eye is able to separate the composition into cells or segements and as I put brush to paint to canvas a stylized moziac is created. I am intrigued by the fact that  when I separately paint all the tones and colours and then step back after the painting is completed, my  work is quite recognizable as a seamless picture composed as a symphony of colours.

I use a more modern approach in the use of watercolours by applying a medium wet paint on an unwashed surface. Using a  freehand technique, the work is created by developing one cell or segment at a time. While going about everyday activities and while travelling, I photograph a myriad of scenes aiming to capture the uniqueness of natural lighting on a subject matter. These inspirational photos become part of my collection for future paintings.

The effect of light seems to have always captured my interest as paintings from childhood and  into my teen years reflect the play of light. Throughout my twenties and thirties experimental photography captured my interest. Again, I was intrigued by light and how light reacted on film. Some of the techniques experimented with  were shots at night using a series of various aperatures and film speed in a still camera mode following both still light and moving light; then a moving camera mode capturing again both still light and moving light. Further experimentation was done with shadows and colour contrasts. This experimentation included the developing of my own film.

In my job as a photoengraver, a colour separator, later as colour corrector and then for over twenty years working with colour on a computer, my ability to visualize the components of colour became finely honed. Upon retirement, on-site painting classes, at Sir Sanford Fleming School of Fine Arts in Haliburton, Ontario, was the springboard to re-open my painting artisit's eye and the realization of how I can visualize minutely the play of light within a subject matter. And so after 42 years of no painting I decided to attempt to capture on canvas how my artist eye sees colour within subject matter.

After working and experimenting with several pieces, the freehand, direct application of watercolours evolved and that was the technique break-through needed to be able to interpret my mind's visual images of seeing light and colour in a segmented way. The fact that I can express myself the way I want to in my artwork and have others appreciate the technique excites me very much.