Graham Hillier; visionary landscape artist
Hyfler/Rosner
Visionary landscape artist whose paintings show a
preoccupation with pilgrimage
JC Davies
Wednesday May 31, 2006
Guardian
The landscape artist Graham Hillier, who has died aged 59,
was at the height of his powers, with new series of
paintings planned and works unfinished. In the last week of
his life he told a visitor: "I wanted to do so much more."
Yet he left behind a large body of work and an international
reputation.
The meticulous detail of Hillier's work paradoxically
enables the viewer to see his paintings as revelations.
Inspired initially by his native East Riding, Hillier also
painted in numerous other areas of Great Britain, including
the Yorkshire Dales, the Ridgeway and Herefordshire, as well
as in France, Spain and Italy.
His many one-man shows (eight of them at the Francis Kyle
Gallery in Mayfair, London, which has represented him for
the past 21 years) usually concentrated on one or two
regions and demonstrated his prodigious technique and
developing vision. His depiction of detail, colour and light
and his unusual angle of vision beckon the viewer into his
ostensibly unpeopled landscapes, cities and buildings. The
viewer is an implicit presence. More strangely, Hillier's
paintings seem like portraits of places which look back at
the viewer.
His preoccupation with pilgrimage is evident not only in
paintings of specific destinations, such as Walsingham or
Santiago de Compostela, but also in all his mature work.
Each painting seems to have an exit point, a way beyond,
whether down a path or road, along a river, or towards a
distant city or far-off woods, painted in a smoky fading
blue as they melt into the horizon. One is led in one's
imagination into his work by his unique and characteristic
use of line, colour and perspective.
Some feel that Hillier's exactitude stops just short of
vision, but he is nonetheless a visionary painter,
discerning and portraying the immanence of the spiritual in
clouds, grasses, trees, water, hills and buildings. He
catches moments of natural transformation, and though he
used cameras in the preparation for his work, he did not
trust them for colours, preferring to remember them exactly
in his head. His canvases are covered by layer upon layer of
acrylic paint as he built up each work to convey an exact,
transfigured memory.
Hillier loved landscapes where, as he once put it, "man and
nature live together in a state of grace and harmony". "My
paintings," he wrote, "have recorded pauses, brief halts on
the journey. I aim to create a space into which I could take
the next step." Part of England's landscape tradition, yet a
truly international artist, Hillier invites the viewer to
pause with him and "to take time for reflection on the
journey past and the anticipation of the journey not yet
taken". His destinations include cities (Carcassonne,
Avignon) and doorways through which the light pours in
invitation (Lincoln Cathedral). In a time when other kinds
of art are fashionable, Hillier reminds us of the need for
technical integrity in the service of vision.
Born and brought up in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, he
studied at Leeds College of Art and Newcastle University. He
was head of art and graphic design at Branston Community
College, Lincolnshire, before becoming a full-time painter.
At his homes in Lincolnshire and Normandy, he and his
devoted wife Candia, whom he had known and loved since they
were both teenagers, were wonderful hosts to many. With
their two sons, Tristram and Simeon, they formed a close and
hospitable family. They all survive him.
· Graham Charles Hillier, artist, born October 5 1946; died
March 12 2006.