Using acrylic paints, markers, inks and cut paper from a collection of source materials, Skip Hill has produced a body of work that includes mixed-medium drawings, paintings on canvas and wood, mixed media collages on paper, children’s book illustrations, and large-scale interior and exterior murals.

In a world that often feels out of order, it is profoundly human to seek some semblance of control to reshape the world and our experience of it by whatever means of imagination we have. Reconfiguring the world using the technique of collage and mixed mediums is at the heart of my art practice. I decontextualize. I rearrange. Then I reconstruct using hand-cut paper, acrylics and inks, to produce colorful drawings, paintings and murals that establish a personal world of lyrical moods, and lush, visual experience. 

Frequently my art features imaginative portraits that revisit and reorder perceptions of beauty and representation. I centralize the figure within verdant environments of ecstatically dense, yet balanced compositions of seemingly chaotic arrangements; landscapes teeming with exotic birds and flora, or busy barber shops and beauty salons crowded with music and Black hair care products.

The aesthetic of my paintings is drawn from African American folk art, African tribal motifs and contemporary popular culture. My visual language is rooted in the geography of my travels through Europe, Asia, Mexico, North Africa and Brazil.  I find inspiration in the canons of art history from Van Gogh, Franz Hals and the portraitures of the Dutch Golden age, the Japanese woodcut artist Kitagawa Utamaro and the collage works of Romare Bearden.

My art is most profoundly informed by narratives, intuition, improvisation, and the act of creating order out of the remnants and scraps of disorder scattered about my studio.

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 made many sacrifices and had many challenges, 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.

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.