Hilary Hoyt
Hilary Hoyt was raised in upstate New York
and began painting when
she was eight. Her father taught her to work with oils and though she
paints in what she calls a childlike style full of clothesline straight
horizons, the images are decidedly different from that of a child.
“I painted little happy landscapes then. I didn’t paint little lonely
houses in the middle of nowhere with sorrowful dogs looking at them
from a distance,” she says.
She painted throughout her early years, put it aside for soft
sculpture for a period of time, returning to it as primary expression in
1981.
She studied at Russell Sage College in Albany, and the Mass.
College of Art in Boston and her spare imagery, although reminiscent of
outsider art, is a conscious choice of paring away the unneeded, leaving
only spare lines that capture essence rather than the minutia of a more
realistic style.
“The work comes from my own, almost childlike viewpoint of
where the pain in my life sits and how I chose to depict that pain on
paper,” she says.
Her paintings (oil on canvas and oil stick on paper), while offering
initially what appears to be simplicity in their execution are layered with
emotional nuance and her use of color is strong and captivating, setting
the stage for a subtle interplay of pain and power.
“Color can provoke a lot of emotion and people are immediately
drawn by it,” she says, describing her choices as a very intuitive rather
than intellectual process.
The images themselves depict the loneliness of childhood, of
isolation and yet, they are playful, curious and questioning at the same
time. With repeated viewing, the figures take on a totemic quality that
can serve to exorcise the very pain they portray.
The artist’s work has been shown in both solo and group shows in
Provincetown and Boston and is found in private collections. A
Provincetown resident for several years, she currently lives in Somerville.