About Edith Hillinger
Berlin born, Edith Hillinger spent her childhood in Turkey and later moved to the United States as a young adult where she received a B.A. at NYU. Hillinger has won several awards and received various other recognitions for her work. She also has exhibited her work in dozens of solo and group exhibits both nationally and internationally.
Hillinger’s work is aimed to transform common elements of nature into abstract forms. She achieves this by physically manipulating her subject matter and then painting it from a new perspective. Hillinger paints various parts of plants. Before painting them, she’ll place them in a flower press. This, she expresses, works much like an X-ray machine; it exposes elements of the plants that were previously hidden just beneath the surface. Hillinger then paints her flowers in a macro view. These very close up images force the viewer to look at the subjects from a brand new perspective. The results are beautiful canvases that combine the dichotomy of the every day and the abstract.
Education
1964 Four-year certificate in painting, Cooper Union School of Art,
New York
1964 Painting scholarship, Provincetown Workshop, Provincetown,
Massachusetts
1965-66 Textile Design, New School for Social Research, NY
1976 B.A., New York University, New York
Grants and Awards
2016 Nominated for the SECA ART AWARD, SFMOMA
2015 First Prize, Viridian Artists 26th Annual International, NY
2005 Artist-in-residence, New Pacific Studio, Mt. Bruce, New Zealand
2004 Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Award in painting/photography
1976 International Women’s Year Award, The Women Artists Historical Archives, New York
Artist-in-residence, The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire
Artist-in-residence, Montalvo Center for the Arts, Saratoga, California
1975 Painting award, Silvermine Guild of Artists, New Canaan, Connecticut
Painting award, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2018 Vessel Gallery, Oakland, California
2017 Peninsula Museum of Art, Burlingame, California
2013 A Collision of Cultures, Offramp Gallery, Pasadena, California
2010 Natural Perspective, Larson Gallery, University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis and St. Paul
2009 Togonon Gallery, San Francisco
2008 Togonon Gallery, San Francisco
2006 Togonon Gallery, San Francisco
2005 Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, Carmel, California
2005 Aratoi Museum, Masterton, New Zealand
2004 Museo Café Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1986 Amerika Haus Gallery, Munich, Germany
1983 Bluxome Gallery, San Francisco
1981 Works on Paper, Shirley Cerf Gallery, San Francisco
Electro Arts Gallery, San Francisco
Teaching
1971 Fredrich D. Zeman Center for Instruction, New York City
1972-1975 School of Visual Arts, New York City
1976-1979 Private watercolor instructor, California
1980-1985 California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California
Lectures
2008 Women In The Arts Foundation –Women Artists Legacy Issues
2015 Women In The Arts Foundation – BAWA Legacy Project
Writing
1998 Christian Science Monitor
1997 Hemisphere Magazine
Membership Organizations
National Association of Women Artists (elected 2009)
Women in the Arts (member since 1970)
Bay Area Women Artists’ Legacy Project (founder, 2014)
In 2014 I founded the Bay Area Women Artists Legacy Project to address
issues embedded in our society that make it difficult for women to
preserve their legacies after they die. This is an ongoing project
designed to work with art organizations to address these long
standing issues.
Women’s Caucus For Art National and Regional Chapters
Galleries
Offramp Gallery, Pasadena, California
SF MoMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco, California
Artists Statement
“Trust in nature, in what is simple in nature, in the small things that hardly anyone sees and that cans suddenly become huge, immeasurable” Rainer Maria Rilke
I paint large watercolors of very small fragments of nature – often a single petal or leaf. A fragment taken out of context, the petal removed from the flower, is experienced as an abstraction by the viewer. By concentrating on what I see and reducing it to its minimal expression, I capture the essence of the moment, the subject and my experience in viewing the subject.
I paint flowers that have been pressed in a plant press. The pressing acts like an x-ray and the veining, usually hidden by the color of the flower, becomes visible.
Artist Phone: 510 526-1879
Artist Email: edithhillinger@gmail.com
Artists Personal Website: www.edithhillingerstudio.com