Menagerie
New work by Elizabeth Hilton
I was born in West Boise back when it wasn’t quite suburban sprawl. There were the irregularly interspersed neighborhoods among the more frequent farmland and dusty dirt roads. Old or abandoned houses and barns dotted the open space with no sense of organization or neighborly friendliness. Plum and locust trees converged on the many ditches and canals, which bisected the ground in their particularly man made way, all straight lines and right angles. Colors and images from my childhood play a strong role in my inspiration. Old pink, turquoise, and even the yellowed paper from old novels, take me back to that half pleasant half tortuous memory of growing up in a small town in the 70’s and 80’s. Nostalgia permeates my senses as I flip through a vintage magazine looking for just the right shade of grey to adorn a naughty raccoon. I received my BFA from Boise State University with an emphasis in painting. I specialize in oils, and mixed media such as vintage wallpaper, magazines and old books. My style is process oriented, I love to start with some surface texture, an image, and then go from there. I’ve said it before, I start the piece and then it finishes itself! Some scrap of faded wallpaper, the advertisement from an old magazine that sneakily shows through, or the now retro color of a fabulous new turquoise washer ( ! ), all lend themselves to the creation of some nostalgic creature or other. Bits and pieces of the past hiding in the layers.
