Skip Hill Fine Art

Biography

Born 1961 Padre Island, Texas

1973 Artistic gifts are recognised early with half page feature in Sunday edition of Corpus Christi Caller.

79-81 Receives scholarship to attend Oklahoma City University. Produces award winning political cartoons for campus paper before dropping out.

81-87 Works in advertising as Illustrator, Graphic Designer and Creative Director, producing radio and tv commercials for McDonalds.

87-89 Relocates to Southern California doing freelance work but after the painful end of a long term

relationship, he spends much of the time in Tijuana, Ensenada, Baja,Mexico, beginning years of wanderlust.

89-90 Travels to Thailand on tourist visa. Stays for a year eventually working as a correspondent and art director for Bangkok business magazine.

  Spends time at Buddhist meditation retreat. Creates a body of photographs. Explores Thai Northern Hill country and Golden Triangle on motorcycle, visiting native Hmong tribes.

90-92 Travels to Europe, settling in the Netherlands. Learns Dutch and begins intensive study of Art History. Frequent visits to the Stedelijk Museum, the Tropen Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Kroller Muller and Boijman Van Beuningen Museums inspire Hill to create art for art's sake for the first time since childhood.

  He has several one man shows and is featured in local publications. Dutch collectors begin acquiring Skip Hill's paintings and drawings. He travels through a newly united Germany. Visits the Czech Republic, the Karlovy Vary spas; Prague and the St.Charles Bridge spanning the Vltava River.

  Travels to Morocco, producing a series of artist's books while in Essaouira, amid the souks and sands where Jimi walked.

92-93 Relocates to Atlanta, Georgia. But without contacts, he is unable to make any inroads into local art market before his resources run out. Spends several months living in shelters and on the streets of downtown. Battling depression, Hill writes but produces little art during this period of personal and spiritual challenge.

  Hill retreats west on I-20 to Birmingham, Alabama and is reunited with his estranged father who introduces him to the work of black outsider artists Lonnie Holley, Jimmie Lee Sudduth and Mose Tolliver. With encouragement from his father, Hill begins to produce art again, creating a series of large-scale African-inspired masks and totems using junk and found objects.

93-96 Studies under Native American conceptual artist Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds and abstract painter George Bogart at the University of Oklahoma. Hill participates in several museum group shows. He curates and creates an installation for the exhibition "Casting Stones" at the Fred Jones Museum of Art.

 

 Produces the sculpture installation and video "Heaven to Earth" in response to the Oklahoma City bombing, garnering attention in

  local and national media.

1996 Returns to the Netherlands to execute murals commissioned by the Groot Hontschoten Gardens Foundation. Exhibits new work.

97-03 Hill marries the former Sonya Trotter. Marriage gives birth to son Adam.

 

  Hill illustrates several unrealized children's book projects. He exhibits drawings in Dallas,Texas before a panel of authors, editors and designers winning recognition from the Dallas Society of Childrens' Book Writers and Illustrators. The earliest of the Baroque Noir Series of paintings are

exhibited in New York City at the Savacou Gallery, The National Black Fine Arts Show and in Houston at the African-American Arts Fest. In July 2003 Hill returned to Atlanta ,the scene of his great personal tribulation, exhibiting his latest works at the National Black Arts Festival, garnering an interview featured on Black Entertainment Television.

03-06 Hill exhibits at the JRB Gallery and the CityArts Center in Oklahoma City.

  He begins incorporating collage elements into his work, producing the Tattoo Series of paintings which are first exhibited in the show Defying and Defining at the Individual Artists of Oklahoma Gallery before they traveled to Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta where Hill wins Best In Show honors at the Atlanta Dogwood Art Festival.

Sept. 2006

 

  Skip Hill exhibits his works at Chicago Jazz Festival where he met noted Chicago artists Paul Benjamin and Andre Guichard as well as Ernani Silvia, celebrated Brazilian expressionist painter from New York City. The resonance of Hill's latest work leads to a personal introduction to a well known and well respected gallery owner in Chicago's celebrated River North District.

 

Oct. 2006

 

  Skip Hill is selected to receive the Margaret M. Dabney Visual Arts award for "outstanding achievements " by the Black Liberated Arts Center, October 7, 2006 at the Petroleum Club

  in Oklahoma City.

Apr. 2007

 

  Skip Hill is invited by the Oklahoma State Arts Council to exhibit over 20 of his original paintings in a one-man show in the Governor's Gallery at the State Capitol .

Jan. 2008

  He publishes 'Skip Hill: Afro-Modernist Gumbo',a limited edition, hardbound portfolio of work produced over the last two years.

2008

Exhibits paintings and sculptures from the Tattoo Series and Le Boxers at Artropolis/Chicago in the Merchandise Mart Artist Market.

Has critically successfull show at Mainsite Art Gallery in Norman, OK., selling a majority of the works opening night.

Publishes Wrestling With Angels, a biographic portfolio of poems,The Harem drawings, early paintings, and photographs documenting his impressions in Thailand during its economic rise of the late eighties.

2009

Hill participates in Transcend, a documentary film and exhibition of African-American Artists working in Oklahoma, curated by Nathan Lee at Living Arts Studios in Tulsa.

La Menina Preta (Aida) is acquired by George and Cookie Kaiser.

Skip Hill is profiled in Sept/Oct 2009 issue of ArtFocus Magazine published by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition.