| Gregory
Hilton - Painter
Artist's Statement
by
Gregory Hilton
My most Recent Work is an expression of the combination
of unique and traditional materials juxtaposed with a new identification
with pure color. The simplified composition is merely there as
a catalyst to act as a foundation to allow this interaction to
take place. The pure pigments are infused with various liquid
materials and troweled onto the surface. After being allowed to
dry, they are lightly sanded. Varnish is applied to the color,
and manipulated with a liner while in its wet state.
I try to make each color diferent from any
color I have used before in any other previous painting. There
are certain colors that seem to mate with each other better
than other combinations. I think of it as a sort of chemistry,
almost like an affinity between two people.
As a painter, I look for these colors everywhere,
outdoors, in the streets, even in museums. They are sometimes
hard to realize, they have to come to the surface like from
inside the eight ball. They have to speak to me somehow and
stay in my head untill I can get around to bringing them out.
Only then do I feel like I have communicated something.
The
Art of Gregory Hilton: The Rhythm Method by
Howard McCalebb
Gregory Hilton's paintings represent a style of articulation as
well as artistic inspiration.
The colors in Hilton's work are taken from
phantasmagoric personal experiences carried into the studio
by memory to be translated onto chromatic expression. His work
explores the individual identity of colors made manifest with
a combination of traditional and nontraditional materials.
To Hilton, colors are like people: there is
chemistry between them. Every color seen in the work is unique
and unlike any other. Inevitably, just as with people, some
color combinations work better than others, and sometimes opposites
attract, and sometimes they fight like cats and dogs.
Hilton's philosophy of form, and formal composition
express his belief that artistic inspiration come directly from
toil, and that formal evolution is a byproduct of an active
process that comes naturally after working over time. By paring
down his composition into a simplistic visual vocabulary he
allows the surface to act as an arena for playing with pigments
and hues. Even though the geometric forms seen in the work appear
rational, cogent, and strong, like mathematical calculation,
their important nature is that they are neutral and detached.
The forms are generally unaffected by emotional involvement
or any form of bias that might compete against the importance
of the color. In the fundamental Sutras of the Mahayana Buddhist
tradition, “form is no different than emptiness,
and emptiness is no different from form.
For Gregory Hilton, only when he has completed
his full process does he feel that something can be communicated.
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