Skipfolio: Coffee With Beatrix

Koffie Met Beatrix 4’w x 4’h x 1” acrylic and collage on canvas

Meanwhile… back in the Studio, Skip Hill is creating bold still-life paintings with a funky fresh appeal.


"Koffie Met Beatrix" is from an evolving series of large, colorful works that play with abstracted space, place and mood. "These paintings reflect my love of languages, music, travel, as well as rich coffee, exotic tea and the fruit of the vine."

As a general rule, the Dutch keep their curtains open. As a culture perhaps the Dutch feel they have nothing to hide, and therefore do not feel the need to close the drapes in their homes. “Koffee Met Beatrix” is an intimate look through such a window into a gabled canal house in Amsterdam. The room is a harmony of abstracted space, contrasting patterns and clashing colors reflecting the schizophrenic elegance of the city itself.
Skip Hill’s recurring motif of the Asian porcelain vase is the central figure here..."a visual metaphor for Woman with full hips and a Japanese tattoo". The Dutch love fresh flowers,"bloemen" which in this painting explode with color and energy. Coffee time with cookies or light cakes is a delightful Dutch custom and “De koffie is klaar!” means the coffee is ready. A guest arrives on her omafiets (translated as “grandma’s bike” ) the classic Dutch mode of transportation in a city which has as many bicycles as people. One of Chopin’s Preludes is at play on the stylized baby grand beneath a painting of Beatrix, Queen of The Netherlands.

Skip Hill brings these elements together with a loose, cartoon inspired style, with humor and with love for one of his favorite places.

"Koffie Met Beatrix" is available for purchase or lease.

You Love It, You Want It...Find out how to get it!

 Contact us skiphillart@gmail.com

Love Birds

Skipfolio: Throwback Shot

Skip Hill      Fall Mid 90's? North Parrington Oval

 The University of Oklahoma, Norman Oklahoma.

Much too serious....I was spilling my guts out for this Art, was chained to it. Like a crow looking for a glittery thing, mining the History of Art and the banality of Pop culture, The Mimbres...Reaching and searching, desperate for something to hustle, copy or covet...Something visually cool and intellectually deep, with ( Le Patte) just the right painterly touch ...a style, a vision of what to draw, paint, sculpt or shape.... something to get me in the Market then into fame and fortune...just like that....straight tripping...certainly high,..Half the time I didn't know what the hell I was doing with myself, with art or why I was even trying....but on that breezy, sunny day

I could testify.."That lips distill nectar."

Doing the bohemian thing like a method actor, soul-pressed, mind-stressed living that shit Daily, to make this Art. Praying  to jesus for backup and the next twenty bucks. 

Wondering every day why I wasn't in Amsterdam?

"Liefde is Mogelijk"

Vincent Van Gogh   Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Easel, and Japanese print,

January 1889 (F527)  Oil on Canvas  60x49 cm  Courtauld Institute Galleries, London

Van Gogh cut off his ear

and gave it to a prostitute,

who flung it away in disgust.

Van,

whores don't want ears.

They want money.

I guess that's why you were such a great painter:

you didn't understand much else.

"But hey, that Gauguin was a crazy fool too..."

Skipfolio: Tripping towards Home

Skip Hill     The Prophet (He Got Game)  2009  

28"h x 24"w    monoprint with artist embellishments

The drive back through the Heartland was practically a religious experience. Six states in one day through varied landscapes and shifts of terrain, culture and time.

Tempting the speed limit, blowing past big rigs and crossing borders with the face of my son before my mind's eye. Billboards preach affirmation of my purpose, destiny and blessings... "I love you, I love you, I love you"...God.

Omens of safe return and promises all along the way. I had driven most of the trip in silence, except for my thoughts, the atmospheric noise of passing cars and whispering wind. Three-hundred miles out, I loaded the CD player with Moodswing's Spiritual High, The State of Independence featuring the seductive vocals of Chrissie Hynde.  By the time I hit the Ozarks, a slushy mix of rain and snow had limited visibility, yet I felt the truck practically drive itself homeward like a horse honing in towards its stable. At dusk, the sun shone like a divine eye through the gathering of clouds as it settled into the horizon. I couldn't help but smile at the tears gathering in my eyes listening to Dr. Martin Luther King's haunting sermon of hope  backed by a gospel chorus in the third movement.

Crossing over into the Cherokee Nation and the descending dark, riding the pony past Checotah, Sallisaw and Henryetta, another life away from Constitution Hall, the gritty streets of Philly, the Washington Monument, Stone Mountain and the Georgia pines. Indian casinos appear like cities of heaven in the distance and just as quickly fade into night behind me. The chasm of miles between here and home shrinking with every minute and the blur of white lines slipping under my wake.

One more Love's truck stop and my exit is next. Pulling into the driveway as if I had left just yesterday, I feel my heart race even as my mind eases. I sit in the car with my eyes closed and "Spiritual High" bumping loud, listening to the refrain and chorus for the last time tonight..."the state of independence shall be...the state of independence shall be.." The garage door slowly rises as Adam comes running out to the car. I lift up him, we hold each other tight without a word and I feel his tears convulsing in his chest as well as mine,... both of us engulfed in the swirl of music and this precious moment.

Skip Hill: New Work Atlanta, 2010

Skip Hill        Lekker LaLa (Kumquat)  

2010, acrylic/epoxy on canvas, 20"h x 20"w

The Real Thing?

A fingerprint has intensifed the debate about the origin of a mysterious drawing sold at auction for $21,850. Is it a bargain Leonardo da Vinci picked up under the noses of connoisseurs or is it just an old German drawing? That is the $150 million question that art scholars in Europe and the U.S. are asking about La Bella Principessa.

.....The subject is believed to be Bianca Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.

  Atlanta, GA.

Lekker LaLa (Kumquat) isn't a Leonardo but rather the first painting I have produced this year.  I have been on the road away from the studio the last five weeks and had been in a creative funk for some time even before my trip began. 

      Lekker LaLa is the effort that has brought me out of the desert and will be a special painting in my body of work.

      Collectors and observers of my work always remark about the rich colors, but the challenge of this new painting has been keeping the colors muted and accentuating the contrast of ebony and the white of these long Winter days.