BIOGRAPHY

Skip Hill was born in 1961 in Padre Island, Texas but grew up primarily in Oklahoma City. After attending Oklahoma City University to study Advertising and Marketing, he worked as a graphic designer before relocating in 1987 to Southern California. A two-week trip to Thailand in 1989 turned into a year traveling throughout Southeast Asia while writing for a business magazine based in Bangkok. In 1990 Skip Hill relocated to the Netherlands, immersing himself in the culture and learning the Dutch language. His frequent visits the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum and The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam as well as the Boijman Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, sparked Hill’s interest in creating art inspired by aesthetic concerns over the strictly commercial art he produced during his advertising career. It was during this time abroad that he traveled through Germany, Czechoslovakia and Morocco. After returning to Oklahoma in 1993, Skip Hill studied formally at The University of Oklahoma with conceptual artist Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds, and influential abstract painter George Bogart. After his studies, Hill established studios in Oklahoma City and Norman, Oklahoma with the goal of creating an audience for his artwork within his home state and beyond. He made it a personal mission to engage and inspire children with his love for art while working as an Artist In Residence in public schools. Hill acquired a growing number of collectors from around the country while exhibiting his work at art fairs in Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas. During this prolific period, Skip Hill’s original painting ‘The Dream Sower’ was inducted into the Oklahoma State Art Collection by the Oklahoma Arts Council in 2014. In the years since, Skip Hill’s art has been exhibited throughout the state in cultural institutions and galleries that include Oklahoma Contemporary, Fred Jones Museum of Art, The Betty Price Gallery at the Oklahoma State Capitol, Gaylord-Pickens Museum, Goddard Art Center, Artspace at Untitled, Living Arts Tulsa, 108 Contemporary, JRB Art at the Elms Gallery, Mainsite Gallery and Kinfolk House. In 2022 The Philbrook Museum in Tulsa acquired two of Skip Hill’s artworks for their collection.

ARTIST INSIGHTS

How are your background and life experiences connected to your art?

As much as my love of books and reading, my international travels have been instrumental in the development of my visual aesthetic. The use of gold is my work is the residue of a year I spent in Thailand living in the shadow of golden Buddhist statues and meditating in local temples with gold laden interiors. My practice of placing my idealized subjects in the foreground of the picture plane are influenced by my time living in the Netherlands studying the commissioned portraitures of the 17th century Dutch master Franz Hals as well as the reflective self-portraits of Vincent Van Gogh. The lush, verdant flora of Brazil figure prominently in my mixed-media collage paintings from the 'Under the Mango Tree' series'. Travel opens my eyes and my heart with the leaving the familiar to encounter the unfamiliar with wonder, with humility.

Who are some of your biggest artistic influences?

When I was about 12 years old my father, who collected prints of African American artists, introduced me to the art of Romare Bearden. Perhaps more than any artist Romare Bearden's Cubist inspired mixed-media collages incorporating African masks as well as found images of urban and rural Black people, have been foundational to my aesthetic development.

How have you developed your artist career?

I'm not sure I'd call what I do a career as much as a lifelong practice. It's been haphazard and unsure at times. In the course of searching for my creative voice, I've tried different approaches at different times. I have had to find my own way. The key to my development throughout my practice has been a tenacious commitment to making art vital in my life. I have endured by not quitting in moments of despair and by not getting stuck in the highs or the lows. Developing relationships has been crucial. Being kind and giving as much as I receive has also been important. I have been ripped off, but I have also been extraordinarily blessed.

What does your artistic work intend to communicate to its audience?

I want the viewer to experience a crystalized moment of visual delight and wonder, that provokes contemplation and curiosity.

Does your work comment on any current social or political issues?

While I am personally an avid political junkie, I generally avoid making overtly political statements through my art. Politics can certainly unite people together in a common cause, but they are also inherently divisive. We all have experienced the heartbreaking disappointment of discovering that an author, musician or artist whose creativity we love and admire, has firmly held political opinions diametrically opposed to our own. The beauty and power of their art doesn't change, but our perception of that art becomes conflicted. I'm not interested in feeding conflict. That being said, as a Black man in America there is a expectation that my art speak to the historic and contemporary pain of the Black experience in this country. There are talented artists better equipped than me to do that. If my art is political at all, as it is with my 'Barbershop Phrenology' series, it is a rebellious act of negating Black pain and negative images, by radically celebrating Black cool, beauty and joy.

Do you have a particular story that stands out from your career as an artist?

In considering this question I immediately recalled one of my art exhibitions some years ago in Chicago. Prominent in the show was one of my large collage works of a Black woman with closely cropped hair standing prominently in the picture plane, with one hand on her hip, the other hand offering a bit of fruit. Her body was composed of smaller images of women and texts sourced from art history and various world cultures and languages. At one point I noticed a slender young woman standing in front of the piece. As I approached her to inquire what she thought about it, I could see she was quietly crying. She turned slowly to face me while still averting her eyes and asked, "Do you know what this word means?" "Yes, I do. It's the Swahili word for heart" I replied. She preceded to tell me she was an exchange student from Kenya and had been in Chicago just a few weeks and was feeling terribly homesick. While looking closely at the painting her eyes fell on the word 'Moyo', placed under a heart shaped from cardboard, painted gold and positioned in the center of the woman's figure. "I miss my family so much, but when I saw the word 'Moyo' in your painting, I felt their love and their hopes for me so powerfully. I could hear my mother's voice saying "We love you, my Daughter and we are beside you wherever you are." She smiled softly, wiped the tears from her eyes and asked if it was okay if we hugged. I opened my arms to embrace her. "Thank you so much for sharing your art" she said. "I wish I could afford to buy it." I replied with tears in my eyes now, "It's okay. You have given me more today than anyone could pay for it." I still own that painting.

What is one thing you would like your audience to know about you?

Behind the cool artist pose I'm a real nerd.

Which current art world trends are you following?

I have been in the art game long enough to see art world trends come in with a splash and pass with a whimper. Abstraction is in, abstraction is out. Figuration is in, figuration is out. NFT's are hot, until they're not. Better to focus on your own creative journey than to be sidetracked by the prevailing winds of erratic art market. Who knows, in time the art world might circle around to what you've been doing for years.

Why have you chosen to sell your work in the 1515 Lincoln Gallery?

My dear friend, brother and fellow artist Nathan Lee mentioned to me in the course of a conversation that Susan McCalmont had asked him a number of times if he thought I would consider showing with her at 1515 Lincoln Gallery. I knew Susan by reputation and her involvement with various arts and business organizations in Oklahoma and beyond the state. I was wary, not because of any doubts about her integrity and capabilities, but for my own ambivalence about galleries at this stage of my career. I had managed to sell a lot of art without representation over the years. I was more interested in finding a gallery outside of Oklahoma if I was going with a gallery at all. Nathan proposed that we have a show together in light of our long association and mentioned that 1515 Lincoln Gallery would love to host such an exhibition. So, I met with Susan for lunch. In the course of a delightfully animated discussion, we were both pleasantly surprised by our threads of shared experiences of background and upbringing. I visited the gallery and was blown away by the space, as well as her vision of creating a environment that brings the artists represented in her gallery (many of them longtime friends) together for salon style events. I also like the idea of my art being in the company of the Picassos and Robert Motherwells that Susan has for sale in her gallery. Perhaps most important for me is Susan's relationship with collectors throughout the United States as well as internationally. I am excited about the new relationship, the artistic impact and the ambitious vision of 1515 Lincoln Gallery in Oklahoma and beyond.

What do you believe makes 1515 Lincoln Gallery distinct from other galleries?

As opposed to a cold white cube with an aloof and intimidating staff, 1515 Lincoln Gallery is a pleasantly welcoming and accessible. The gallery space is tastefully appointed with a mélange of contemporary and classic styles of art with a wide range of price points. There is a bar area that hosts regular wine tastings. The gallery also has an outdoor patio and several indoor lounge areas with funky and sophisticated furnishings that invite visitors to experience the art in a relaxed and intimate setting.

WATCH

OVAC Fellowship Awards: Skip Hill

ARTIST STATEMENT

Thematically poetic, and subtlety narrative in content, my art is a visual journey often featuring feminine figures, flocks of birds, and the exotic fauna of an imagined environment I invite my audience to explore. I focus on color, composition, contrasts of moods, and flowing line work. The most captivating parts of my works are peripheral details from Art History, elements of folk art, looping graphic lines, kinetic scribbling, Asian calligraphy, African motifs and Pop culture.

Skip Hill’S AVAILABLE ART

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