Yemeni Girls Painting

Hilary Dunne lives near to the beautiful old town of Stamford in England after spending many years living in London's Notting Hill . She was born in Northamptonshire and grew up in Essex. She has travelled extensively in India, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean and has family connections in Ethiopia. She is a figurative artist, and by her own admission, not a very modern one! She is passionate about colour and influenced by the boldness, sensitivity and colour of the 15th century artists such as Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi; the extravagance and exoticism of the 19th century artist, Gustav Klimt; the cultures and passions of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America; and the mysticism of the icon of the Christian church. She has had a passion for plants from early childhood and flowers appear symbolically in many of her paintings. She generally prefers to work on board as this harks back to the beginnings of modern art which she feels an affinity with. She uses a structure medium over the board in order to create depth and texture and then oils - for their richness of consistency - and gold and other leafs - and anything else - from wallpaper and paper doillies to gels and fragments - that come to hand. Some of her work is direct and explicit - reflecting a vivid memory, a glance, a moment in time. Other is much more complex, looking often into a much more magical place - a world of myth and symbol. Hilary is fascinated by the life behind the mask of all of us, at the layers that lie beneath, and also - maybe because she is bipolar herself - by the nature of duality - light and dark, male and female, ego and alter ego, life and death, and also by the parallel and spirit worlds around which some cultures turn. She navigates this territory in her journey to place herself.