The actual drawing is much more dense and therefore much darker than this Web site's format allows to be shown.
In one sense, Jim Hill has been an artist during most of his 70 years. While in elementary school, he persisted in drawing during class time, to the neglect of assigned lessons and activities. Four years of high school art classes contributed to his artistic skill development, and he was chosen to design the program cover for a conference of the Illinois Art Educators Association. One of his abstractions was also selected for permanent display in his Springfield, Illinois, high school gallery. College courses in art history broadened Jims understanding and appreciation of art and artists in the context of their historical and social milieu. At the same time, he continued to create art for himself, family and friends. During his 33 years as a public school teacher, principal and district administrator, Jims development as an artist continued. He experimented with various media and techniques while fulfilling requests to produce artworks on a professional basis, i.e., portraits, caricatures, publication covers, designs for promotional and informational brochures, and even a mural that spanned an entire wall of a school gymnasium. Retirement has afforded the time for Jim to pursue art on a full-time basis. Since retiring, he has been preparing a collection of works to show and now feels ready to enter the marketplace and find his audience. First and foremost, Jim creates art because the process and the product give him much pleasure. Through the years, he has come to realize that the creative process provides fulfillment, satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, emotional release and intellectual stimulation. When someone else finds meaning and/or pleasure in his works, thats a bonus. ARTISTS STATEMENT In creating works of art, I am attempting to convey emotions that are part of the human experience and to represent the beauty of human form, primarily the face. To do this, I use as inspiration images that I find in periodicals, films, family albums and photos that I take. I choose images that touch me and virtually compel me to adapt them into a composition of my design. My primary technique is stippling or pointillism, whereby the medium (for my work, ink on mat board) is applied one dot at a time. I love the soft, almost hazy image that this technique promotes and the subtle changes between light and shadow that it allows. In addition, it gives me the control I need to produce the outcome that I seek. I use ink for the same reasons. With some exceptions, my works are monochromatic. In most cases, using tones of a single color allows me to convey more powerfully the desired emotion or mood. Also, my preference for ink and mat board affords me choices among a wide range of colors. While my intent is to convey a particular emotion in each of my works, the content of each is sufficiently ambiguous so that viewers may make it their own, infusing it with whatever feeling, mood or story that it stimulates in them.
