Harriet Hill
Phoenixville, PA
Born to Dutch dairy farmers in LA, lived life cross-culturally, especially in Africa , now pursuing my first love, making art.
MessageMy whole life, I have been making art. My fingers fiddle with napkins and candle wax. I can’t remember a time when I did not have a project of one sort or another. I was headed to being an art major, but life took an unexpected path, a path out of my immigrant Dutch community, out of American culture, and into Africa, into villages, learning language and culture, developing relationships with the ‘other’, raising a family with gusto on ‘foreign’ soil. My eyes drank in the colors, the rhythms of life and dance, the appeal of relationships with people very different from me. I have been described as a world citizen.
It has only been later in life, once I was back on US soil, that I had the opportunity to explore art seriously. Since 2000, I have been painting, with invaluable mentors in Dallas and Philadelphia. My work has appeared in 15 juried shows and is on display in Phoenixville, PA with exhibits year-round.
Statement
The whole world is groaning, suffering: nature is groaning, we are groaning, even God is groaning. We are like a woman in childbirth crying out in pain.
But it will not always be so. Morning comes after night, spring comes after winter, life after death. Light absorbs darkness, love is stronger than hate. And nothing—not suffering, not even death—can separate us from God’s immense love. [1]
According to Simone Weil, “Joy and suffering are two equally precious gifts both of which must be savored to the full. Through joy, the beauty of the world penetrates our soul. Through suffering it penetrates our body.”
My life experience includes joy and suffering, firsthand and in others. I lived in African villages for years, learned their language and culture, drank in their vibrant joie de vivre, felt the pain of being off the beaten path with less access to everything I had taken for granted. I’ve worked with victims of war, domestic abuse, and disasters around the world for 20 years, and bear witness to their horrific trauma and crushing grief. I also bear witness to the uncanny laughter that sprouts in the midst of grief—playfulness, hope, and even joy stripped of all accoutrements. “God is good” and “This is hard”, repeated antiphonally, both true at the same time.
After a lifetime of writing, I am tired of words. My art expresses what I believe and value, using vibrant color and form. It juxtaposes the human realities of suffering and joy, bondage and freedom, death and life, decay and splendor, longing and being sated, sorrow and laughter, hope and fulfillment, to tell the truth about life as we know it. And to nurture hope, that the human spirit is indomitable.
[1] Weil, Simone. Waiting for God. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1951: 132.