Plein Air

PleIn Air painting simply means painting outdoors, and is a direct exchange between artist and environment. Painting from life is more difficult than painting from photographs because life changes, flowers wilt, a cloudy day suddenly becomes sunny. It is an experience of uncontrolled weather, changing light with limited personal convenience and supplies. Painting on location means chasing the lignt which turns each painting into an adventure — hopefully capturing what is most important. The challenge in painting from life becomes one of expressing the energy that comes with change in the environment, as well as from what the eyes can see.

Watercolor

I choose watercolor as a paint medium, because watercolor has an intertwining bond with the paper; the paint having staining, transparent or opaque properties. It becomes not so much a process of controlling the paint, as having a conversation with it.

Born Palo Alto California, Marilyn Hill studied fine arts, sculpture at U.C. Santa Barbara [B.A]. and U.C. Berkeley [M.A.], and she exhibited sculpture in the Stanford Art Gallery, the Berkeley Gallery, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art before pursuing a career as a creative professional. She provided illustration, animation, graphic and information design, for both print and web, to Bay Area publishers and businesses – large and small – adding 2 more AS degrees in Multimedia, from College of Marin.

Marilyn used watercolor as a commercial illustrator before turning to it, first as a flower painter then as a landscape painter in 2003. In 2009 she began showing her work by participating in Calistoga Art in the Park, San Francisco Bay Estuary Project, and The Epperson Gallery Valona Paint Out in Crockett, Images of Alameda , 2010, in Alameda and the Frank Bette Plein Air Paintout, 2010. Her paintings hang in several private collections.

Email: Marilyn
Phone: 510-232-5311

At times, some bit of ground, light, water or beauty calls and demands to be painted. I like selecting landscapes that are not too complex to begin with, so I don't have to artificially simplify them. This allows me to explore all the natural intimacies of a location with freedom.

With these landscapes, the subject matter seems less important to me than the energy of the day; a certain temperature, texture or rhythm — a kind of natural energy to convey in color and paint.

Occasionally these sketches become the studies of larger paintings, but I consider them often the best and most real of my painting.

Even a bouquet of flowers has a kind of vibration or unique quality; each flower a personality. I seem to capture the spirit of a flower best, not by rendering its likeness, but by observing and interpreting its nature.

The practice of painting a still life is an opportunity to study a number of arranged objects in a controlled setting. It provides me the best opportunity for problem solving and examination. Some of the fun comes from having the control over the setting and some comes from trying not to make it look still.