Terry Hilt

Terry Hilt: Sounds of the Sea

I am captivated by constant motion and force of the landscape-the physics of gravity, velocity, and electricity as these create continual movement within the sea, fields, and sky. In the studio I paint the kinesthetic memories of these shifting elements in an abstracted, energized landscape.
I experience nature as a living, primordial force-- I see it everywhere, internally feel it- and express it in thick watercolor. There it is all around us—the evidence of gravitational power of the celestial bodies on rising-falling tides, the downward rush of river water, the evidence of massive weights of glacial carvings on rock. The natural world around us is vibrating and pulsing with the energy of life seen in the constant movement of wind--the flickering leaves, the swaying boughs of trees, the rolling waves, the leaning grasses, and the startling of birds. The variability is constant whether swift or slow, bold or delicate, nothing is static.
Back in the studio after walking, hiking, swimming and boating, I am full of kinesthetic memory of the series of moments that have fled by me as I have moved in space. What is imprinted is the essence of the powerful energy of the landscape filled with opposing tensions and contrasts of movement. The work is expressive, and is conveyed by a style of muscular action painting-- compressed impressions of the forces of nature I experienced in the field. In these paintings the seeming frenzy of colored patterns within choreographed lines represents a stream of natural images- abstracted forms with a sense of all-at-once and one moment in time.
I see and paint a fractured space with the power of motion—using shifting angles, unclosed circles and jumbled lines. In my painting process I attempt to link these unruly forces with interwoven lines of perspective that swept by the atmospheric spaces in front of me. Dashes of wax-resist, and dark, calligraphic lines are used to convey this directional sense and to contain the forms. High key, rich color also gives weight and structure to the shifting elements.
There have been many who have influenced my direction in painting. I was first introduced to watercolor by down east painter, Ed Foster. However, I have been mostly influenced by the Maine coastal modernists such as Marin, Betts, as well as Tam who went beyond Cezanne’s accomplishment of fractured space adding exciting motion to their work. I also have studied works by Kienbusch and Hartgen, painters who also captured strong movement and energy. Monhegan artists James Fitzgerald, and Leo Brooks have influenced my use of strong lines and richly applied watercolor as medium.

Terry Hilt

"Headlights Over Cadillac II" watercolor 22x30 will be featured in David Little's and Carl Little's book
Art of Acadia

"Katahdin Flight" watercolor 22 x 30 was featured in David Little's and Carl Little's book
Art of Katahdin.

Terry and her husband Dr. Dana Hilt were guest presenters at the MDI Bio Lab July 27.

“Scientists’ specific language terms and mathematical formulas are symbolic codes for known concepts about the dynamic forces present in the universe. Can a different code and “truth” describing nature’s moving forces within the landscape be validly conveyed by the artists’ symbolic language of reality by use of pigment, line and stroke?”
Terry Hilt

Click images for larger views from the 2016 Acadia Series