Fiona Hilton

Bio

Fiona Hilton (she/her) is a Bay Area-based impressionistic landscape and cityscape painter. Originally from Los Angeles, Fiona employs a muted color palette inspired by the desolate scenery of her youth: distant city smog, neighboring deserts, and the vast concrete expanse of city sprawl.

Fiona has over 17 years of experience in the arts. In addition to studying painting at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, she has taken several courses and workshops in a variety of artistic disciplines from silkscreening to product design from top art schools such as the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Otis, UCLA, and ArtCenter. Fiona has also utilized her artistic talents in the film and TV industry, where she spent four years in graphic design and prop painting in Hollywood. She currently works as a graphic designer for the nonprofit The Trevor Project creating resonating illustrations as well as aiding in the development of their pivotal research report graphics.

Artist Statement

I like my art to serve as reflections of humanity, both the accomplishments and imperfections; I find that painting figurative landscapes and cities reflect both these qualities well.   I capture these scenes because I find they act as a portrait of society, rather than a portrait of just one person.  

I aim to capture the essence of an environment lived and inhabited by people, so I use impressionism to instill a sense of movement and life into my works even in the absence of literal people. Instead of dwelling on a perfect conventional landscape, I use wisps of messy paint to gesture anything from modern architecture and cracked roads to human silhouettes and graffiti. 

To mimic the concept of an imperfect world, I play a lot with the balance between disruption and harmony in my artwork.  I often use compositional disturbances such as breaking up my canvases or using off-putting angles and uneven lines to create this energy.  In particular, I experiment with breaking up my canvases since it allows for my pieces to be read more as a window, or a visual simulation of how the human eye moves in a new environment.  Even among the unconventional or odd perspectives, I strive to create a sense of calmness from my viewers that allows them to then think more consciously about their relationship to their environment.