Press Release

“Isobel Hill is an artist based in the East Riding of Yorkshire and much of her work is inspired by this rural landscape. The artist works across media, applying her distinctive, illustrative style to drawing, painting, ceramics and animation. 

Hill uses poetry and drawing to generate ideas, taking note of and mystifying mundane experiences to find wonder in the everyday. Phenomena that can be easy to ignore – a face within the flesh of a banana, a silhouette reflected in a window, the shadow of a tree looming over a neighbouring house – become extraordinary when given due attention. The artist documents these occurrences in her sketchbook and manipulates them digitally before mapping them onto canvases, where they take on an illustrative and painterly quality. 

In this exhibition Hill returns to a number of personally significant motifs: a local folly, neighbouring houses, Flamborough Lighthouse, cutlery, agricultural tools and her late West Highland White Terriers. She layers this imagery within the paintings, shadows from the past and present knitted together to hint at the transient nature of time. The thrown ceramic lamps and hand-painted shades transform the gallery into a space that feels cosy and safe, mirroring the privacy of a bedroom. The artist emphasises the importance of these domestic comforts by elevating the lamps on custom plinths at the centre of the gallery.

The work encourages us to welcome a slower pace of life and to take pleasure in living in the moment. There is, however, an eerie and isolating undertone to the imagery. Hill likens this to the feeling of despair, as it slowly creeps into everyday existence, reminding us that life is a complex balance of good and bad experiences” -87 Gallery