Hilary England

Allentown, United States

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Let's get our Art on!

I was born in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place>, NYC on November 30th, 1969.  My mother is a Cuban immigrant that came to this country in 1960 with her family to escape the Communist regime.  My father is of Anglo descent, although until recently we did not know much about his family as he was separated from his parents at a very young age and didn’t have too much information about them.  <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p> </o:p> I currently reside/work right outside of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.  I have converted a large barn on my property into a studio, and this works very well for me in terms of accommodations, convenience and privacy.  I do spend a lot of time in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York City</st1:place></st1:City> still, spending time with my family, and for work related reasons. <o:p> </o:p> As for my childhood, I moved from Brooklyn to Staten Island as a young child, and I can remember running all over that little island, playing on the beaches, running through the woods, and having a grand time with the bunches of other kids in the neighborhood.  I was an artist from the start, and began drawing when I was three years old.  I was always in awe of nature and the beauty of it, and people fascinated me.   I spent my youth drawing and painting, and by the time I was in high school, I knew that I would pursue Art for the rest of my life. <o:p> </o:p> My Grandmother Amelia Martin was a tremendous influence in my life, as she was a beautiful and strong woman, and I always admired her deeply.  She was a single mother before it was the norm, as she had to leave my Grandfather and sons behind when she left <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cuba</st1:country-region> and fled with my mother and two aunts to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and this always intoned in me of how she was very brave and determined.  Throughout our lives together, she told me many stories about <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Cuba</st1:country-region></st1:place>, and her life there, our relatives still there, and this always intrigued me. <o:p> </o:p> I have gone through struggles in my own life-- one of the harder ones was losing her.   When she passed away suddenly in 1998, I felt as if a large chunk of my heart had been taken away with her, and that hole never healed.  I understood her deeply, because in my own life, I had become a single mother too, raising children alone in an alien world, it seemed, and she understood my life like no one else ever did.  <o:p> </o:p> I had continued to move along with my work, but by the early 2000s I hit the proverbial “brick wall” with everything, as I was worn out from being a single parent, my resources were dwindling, and I was heading into that uninspired area of desperate drought.  I stopped working all together for nearly a year, and then I got hit by the brick wall of inspiration—literally.  I was involved in a bad motorcycle wreck in which I was nearly killed.  The months of pain, uncertainty, and then recovery gave me new inspiration and a new lease on life, and I began to work again in earnest. <o:p> </o:p> As an adult, I’ve gone through many evolutions in my work, which is natural to me since I have been painting for my entire life.  I currently consider myself a social realist in terms of artistic content, and a hybrid between a realist and an impressionist in terms of technique.  I don’t care much for labels, but these influences would be the closest alignment to what I am doing currently.  I feel the compelling stories behind each painting, the bold palette, and the contemporary and informal take on realism separates my work from so many other realists on the scene today. <o:p> </o:p> I have a passion for young adults, young women in particular, since so many of them are desperate for answers as we all are.  Most of my own children’s friends are also being raised in single parent families, and this creates unique problems and a spectrum of emotional issues that these kids must deal with.  This subject is one that I feel compelled to create about, to let other people get a glimpse of.  It is cathartic to me, but also, to the subjects of these paintings.  When these young women see themselves as models in these paintings, it makes them feel special and important, that they really do matter, and in the end, they are part of a bigger cause, a bigger picture.  That gives me a tremendous amount of gratitude to be privileged to do that for them.

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