Free from any didactic or moral intent, tortured conceptualism or any social agenda beyond the "Politics of Love", Skip Hill creates color rich and lyrical art exuding moods of epicurean delights in a mélange of sensual and sensory experience.
Some of the most captivating parts of his mixed-media drawings are in their peripheral details – Tattoo expressive patterning, looping graphic lines, kinetic scribbling, Kanji calligraphy and African motifs. Like a shaman, Hill communicates freely between two worlds, between dream and reality, and manages to artfully coordinate his fantasy with his hand.
His body of original paintings, drawings, murals and limited edition prints are in private collections and public spaces on both sides of the Atlantic and in South America. He has traveled, lived and exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, Brazil and North Africa.
Skip Hill was born in 1961 in Padre Island, TX. After studying Graphic Design at Oklahoma City University, he worked in Advertising at various agencies in various creative positions with clients like the McDonald’s Corporation before relocating to Southern California. During this period Hill produced freelance graphic design work and spent much of his time in the Baja peninsula of Mexico.
The increasing lure of wanderlust took him to Thailand, where he lived for a year finding work as an art director for a Bangkok business magazine, spending time at a Buddhist meditation retreat and exploring the country by motorcycle.
In 1990 he settled in the Netherlands, learned Dutch and began an intensive study of Art History. Frequent visits to the great European museums provided the aesthetic experience that sparked his interest in creating art for its sheer beauty and sensuous pleasure.
The drawings he produced during that period were the subject of several one-man shows in the Netherlands. It was also during this time that Hill visited Germany, France, Morocco and a post-Soviet Czechoslovakia including Prague.
His return to the United States in was followed by a reunion with his estranged father in Alabama that would lead to his introduction to the influential work of Southern outsider artists Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Jimmie Lee Sudduth and Mose Tolliver.
In the highly productive and creative years since, Hill has participated in several museum group shows and curated and created an installation for the exhibition Casting Stones at the Fred Jones Museum of Art. He returned to the Netherlands to execute murals commissioned by the Groot Hontschoten Gardens Foundation and to exhibit his new work. Travels to Brazil inspired the popular 'Under The Mango Tree' series of works and the sellout exhibition that followed. He has shown in many art expos, galleries and museums in his long career. Skip Hill's art is found in public and private collections throughout the United States, in the U.K., France, The Netherlands, Colombia and Brazil.
