Describing the Images of Tucker Hill


Perhaps the first impact of Tucker Hill's prints is the essence of light - shining through trees, striking buildings, light that is luminous and glows against darker objects, making them shimmer with an almost unearthly contrast.
To get this impact he chooses to work mostly in black or dark brown (umber) oil that does not distract from the contrast of light and shadow. This is a choice some photographers make, electing black-and-white film over color to dramatize the impact of light alone.
Route 643, Madison County, April 20, 7:45 a.m., 2001
And photography plays a part in Hill's work (see below section "How Hill Makes images"), not so much as a model for what he sees, but as a shorthand way to record a scene, so he can later start the imagining of the scene in his own way.
Route 643, Madison County, June 2, 2001, 7:41 a.m.
[Collection of William Fry]
Hill's monotypes are based on real and homely views of roads and scenes around Madison County where he lives. Unlike some artists who choose subjects such as still life or figures of people that could occur anywhere, or imagined abstractions that exist nowhere, Hill's subjects are taken from a specific time and place: A road near a country store in autumn, a spring day looking at a lane with a tree in bloom in early morning, the backlight on the tree. Even the time of day is significant, and is often included in the title of the picture.
This stop-time impact is a powerful part of his images and, some say, of any work of art.
 "Art is the part of the culture that depends most entirely on time, on knowing exactly when. The emotions it summons belong to the room they were made in, and the city outside the room when they were made. Not a timeless experience of a general emotion but a permanent experience of a particular moment - that is what we want from jazz records and Italian landscapes alike."    (Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, August 13, 2001, p. 33)
Route 643, Madison County, January 31, 4:35 p.m., 2001
Gaarfield Preserve, Madison County, August 25, 3:20 pm., 1998
[Collection of Bob and Kathy Miller]
Hill's images of local scenes are both accurate and enhanced. They may include country buildings (which Hill, as an architectural historian, is expert at rendering), and rural roads, glowing trees, cascades of clouds.
Through painstaking careful balances, Hill translates his affection and reverence for a scene, where light radiates through and around, into a subtly heightened re-creation of the place, the moment and the light. It has the directness of a portrait while capturing, as a human portrait can, the character of the place and the impact that light and shadow can have on a subject. 
  • Examples of Tucker Hill's Work 
  • How Hill Makes Images
  • What is a Monotype?
  • Background of the Artist
  • Why Artists Use Monotype
  • Monotypes on Exhibit 
  • The Images of Tucker Hill
  • See Tucker Hill  Prints on MSN Community of PrintMakers
  • Return to Home Page
  • To e-mail Tucker Hill THill@firstva.com

    All art reproductions copyrighted. Reproduction by permission only.- Text and Web Design by William R. Fry