Hilary was born in Liverpool and completed her degree at Central School of Art and Design, London. She worked as a designer for Liberty, played bass in bands and worked in the British Museum Education Department before beginning a 30 year career teaching Art in schools and in Further Education in London, then Liverpool. After a recent sabbatical in Japan and the Far East, Hilary decided to leave teaching in order to concentrate on my own work, something she has always wanted to do. The last 12 months have represented a huge step for her and have included private commissions, a commission for Aintree Hospital and exhibitions in Unit 51, the Egg and the Domino Gallery. Hilary currently has work in the Lancashire Open Exhibition at the Chapel Gallery and the Liverpool Art Fair. She recently won Stiwdio Maelor’s very own ‘The People’s Choice’ award for one of her tree paintings.
Hilary’s paintings are about colour, light, texture and atmosphere. She doesn’t use photographs or sketches, instead she uses reimagined experiences and memories of landscapes she has visited, from woods in Liverpool and Wales, mountains in Taiwan to sakura blossom in Kyoto, Japan. She recently spent ten days in Ballycastle, County Mayo painting the coastline, bogs and beautiful surrounding surrounding Irish countryside.
Hilary works in a fairly new medium – oil and cold wax, often layering up to thirty or more layers in each painting and then working down into each layer to discover what is beneath, using solvents, scraping and blotting, an approach that reflects the natural processes that inspire her. Hilary’s aim is to achieve a structural integrity through these multi layered surfaces. She paints to get into that quiet place in her mind, where there is no sense of time and she hopes her paintings reflect this essence of a deep, quiet experience.
stiwdiomaelor 