Artist's Statement                                                                    by Gregory Hilton

My most Recent Work is an expression of the combination of unique and traditional materials juxtaposed with a new identification with pure color. The simplified composition is merely there as a catalyst to act as a foundation to allow this interaction to take place. The pure pigments are infused with various liquid materials and troweled onto the surface. After being allowed to dry, they are lightly sanded. Varnish is applied to the color, and manipulated with a liner while in its wet state. I try to make each color diferent from any color I have used before in any other previous painting. There are certain colors that seem to mate with each other better than other combinations. I think of it as a sort of chemistry, almost like an affinity between two people. As a painter, I look for these colors everywhere, outdoors, in the streets, even in museums. They are sometimes hard to realize, they have to come to the surface like from inside the eight ball. They have to speak to me somehow and stay in my head untill I can get around to bringing them out. Only then do I feel like I have communicated something.

The Art of Gregory Hilton: The Rhythm Method                        

Gregory Hilton's paintings represent a style of articulation as well as artistic inspiration. The colors in Hilton's work are taken from phantasmagoric personal experiences carried into the studio by memory to be translated onto chromatic expression. His work explores the individual identity of colors made manifest with a combination of traditional and nontraditional materials. To Hilton, colors are like people: there is chemistry between them. Every color seen in the work is unique and unlike any other. Inevitably, just as with people, some color combinations work better than others, and sometimes opposites attract, and sometimes they fight like cats and dogs. Hilton's philosophy of form, and formal composition express his belief that artistic inspiration come directly from toil, and that formal evolution is a byproduct of an active process that comes naturally after working over time. By paring down his composition into a simplistic visual vocabulary he allows the surface to act as an arena for playing with pigments and hues. Even though the geometric forms seen in the work appear rational, cogent, and strong, like mathematical calculation, their important nature is that they are neutral and detached. The forms are generally unaffected by emotional involvement or any form of bias that might compete against the importance of the color. In the fundamental Sutras of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, “form is no different than emptiness, and emptiness is no different from form. For Gregory Hilton, only when he has completed his full process does he feel that something can be communicated.