Terry Havey Hilt

Force

I am captivated by constant motion and force of the landscape—the physics of gravity, velocity, and electricity as these create continual movement within the sea, fields, sky. In the studio I paint the kinesthetic memories of these shifting elements in an abstracted “all at once” energized landscape.

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Narrative

I experience nature as a creative, primordial force entering through us and around us-- I see it vibrating everywhere, internally feel it- and express it in rich watercolor. There it is all about us—the evidence of gravitational power of the celestial bodies on rising-falling tides, the downward rush of river water, the evidence of massive weights of glacial carvings on rock.  The natural world is pulsing with the these forces seen in the constant movement of wind--the flickering leaves, the swaying boughs of trees, the rolling waves, the leaning grasses, and the startling of birds. The variability is constant whether swift or slow, bold or delicate, nothing is static.

Back in the studio after walking, hiking, swimming and boating, I am imprinted with kinesthetic memory of the series of moments that have fled by me as I have moved in space. I try to capture the essence of this powerful energy of the landscape. The work is expressive, borders on abstract, and is conveyed by a style of muscular action painting—condensed impressions of the forces of nature I experienced in the field. In these paintings, the seeming frenzy of patterns of the choreographed lines is an attempt to capture an all at once image that represents a stream of images. There is the wish to abstract from nature and recreate the impact of the series of moments but in the sense of all at once.

The space around me is filled with opposing energies and contrasts of movement. I see and paint a fractured space with the power of movement--shifting angles, unclosed circles and jumbled lines. In my painting process I nonetheless seek to tie together these unruly forces with interwoven lines of perspective that seemed to cross the atmospheric spaces in front of me. Dashes of wax resist, and dark, quick, linear brush strokes are used to convey this directional sense and contain the forms. High key, rich color also gives weight and structure to the shifting forms.

Maine coastal modernists especially Marin, Betts, and Thon went beyond Cezanne’s accomplishment of fractured space adding exciting motion to their work. In my expressionist landscapes, I am influenced by this concept of abstracted movement.  Monhegan artists, James Fitzgerald, and Leo Brooks have influenced my use of thick watercolor as medium.