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, drawing, painting and art was of great interest to me. A commercial art programme at Danforth Technical Institute, in Toronto, paved the way  to learn other techniques and skills. In 1958 these artistic skills led to the start of my 42 year career as a photoengraver-colour retoucher  in the rotogravure printing industry and its evolution into the age of using the computer as an artistic tool. After retiring in 2000, painting again gave me its calling. Since moving to Vancouver Island in 2003, my watercolour-mozaic style has developed with paintings shown in the Sunday Painters Exhibitionin and in the Gran Prix d'Art. Volunteering as a guest artist in the gift shop studio, at The Old School House and Art Centre (Qualicum Beach), and meeting other artists and visitors has been a motivating experience. Being an active member (since 2006) of the Federation of Canadian Artists (Arrowsmith Chapter), my paintings have been adjudicated into all the FCA Spring and Fall shows with some receiving awards.

     In the Summer June 2010 Arrowsmith FCA show I was honoured to receive a 1st place Award of Excellence for the painting named "Awaiting". 

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.