Today we’d like to introduce you to Mallory Hillis.
Hi Mallory, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I would say that it started with a box of crayons that grew into an arsenal of any media I could get my hands on from age two until present! I always knew I wanted to study art in school. I attended a fine arts magnet high school and, in 2007, I graduated from The University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Art/Art Education. After graduation, I taught middle school art at a school in Collierville, Tennessee, for four years while my husband was also in school. Teaching has always helped to fuel that passion for art as I watch others grow in their abilities through some simple instruction.
In 2012, while anticipating the birth of our first son, I began selling wheel-thrown and hand-built pottery through an Etsy shop called Pottery for the Parentless, an initiative to benefit adoptive families. After the birth of my second son, pottery was quickly becoming laborious and too messy in my shorter margins of time. I swapped clay for watercolors and launched Mallory Hope Designs during weekly babysitter time while my husband was on deployment. It was a way of making lemonade out of lemons. I began exhibiting these works at a local marketplace as well as through Etsy.
More military moves came, but it was an overseas move to Italy that drastically changed my color palette and artistry. My work began a shift towards bolder brushwork, vivid color, and the use of acrylic paints more than watercolor. A total rebranding happened once back stateside, and Mallory Hillis Art was born along with an official website and thematic collection releases. I began to make collections for The Campbell Collective, an artist group based in South Carolina. Licensing involvement also began with Curated American Artists, a group that scouts artwork for big box companies such as Hobby Lobby and Kirkland’s.
My family now resides in East Tennessee, and it feels completely strange to not be packing our bags to move now that our military commitment is over. But the stability has allowed me to be more consistently involved with my local arts community. I now enjoy helping with the East Tennessee Makers Market along with being a live painter and vendor at those quarterly events. It has been an honor to have work in various local shops and to participate my my downtown’s monthly 3rd Thursday art crawl events. I recently became a member of the American Impressionist Society, submitting works for their exhibitions, and I continue to make thematic collections as well as occasional commissions.
I can be found most days homeschooling my four kids full-time. While that role does require quite a bit of time outside of my studio, I am always amazed at how the Lord provides enough bits of time for me to continue pursuing this long-time dream of working as an artist and community contributor.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have been challenges along the way. I would say the primary difficulties have been multiple military moves during my husband’s nine years of active duty. Having four kids along the way also meant I needed to take many breaks from art making in order to get adequate sleep, provide meals, or keep the house clean. Homeschooling meant I needed to give lots of attention to the educational needs of my growing children. However, each challenge also presented opportunities for growth. The challenges reminded me of my truest priorities, and to trust the Lord that He would provide enough time for me to pursue personal goals. Challenges are great for artists, because we are natural problem-solvers. I’m thankful that each difficulty taught me patience, flexibility, better efficiency, and fortitude. I learned the valuable resource of hiring a sitter on occasion, or waking up early before the kids in order to complete a painting. Somewhere along the way, little bits of water and little grains of sand mounded into mighty oceans and pleasant lands, as the familiar poem eloquently states.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I grew up with a love of nature, people, making messes with multiple art mediums, and dancing. I create out of an overflow of wonder from my experience of the natural world – light and color, shape and form, the dancing of the wind… these observations find their ways into my work through expressive mark-making in a desire for the image itself to move with the same vitality of breath and life. Painting becomes a way of response to our creative God who made us in His very image (Genesis 1:27). It also becomes a way of more deeply knowing Who this creative God is through studying His handiwork. We are invited to respond in awe to His creation using art, poetry, song and dance, proving that “the limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition” (Elliot W. Eisner).
I gather much inspiration from the Post-Impressionists – Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne – for their use of exaggerated color to show emotion and their visible brushwork that conveys a sense of energy and movement. I admire the works of Charles Walch, Konstantin Gorbatov, Dorothea Sharp, William Merritt Chase, Joaquin Sorolla, and Elizabeth Endres.
What sets the process of my art making apart is beginning with the end in mind – selecting a strong array of harmonious colors for a piece before looking at the colors that are always naturally there in reality. I take color cues from nature, but I mostly rely on my own selection of color based on emotion and how the colors interplay with each other on the canvas. What sets the work apart visually would be this strong color along with visible mark-making, usually over the entirety of the canvas. This reveals the artist hand and causes the eye to bounce around the composition in a dancer-like fashion, resonating within the viewer a feeling of windswept, joyful exuberance.
What’s next?
I plan to continue making contributions to my local community through the arts as well as submitting entries for shows with the American Impressionist Society. I would love to offer more teaching classes as my children grow, and workshops both locally and overseas. Ultimately, I want to spread joy through color and texture and human hands, making real-life connections with others along the way, and bringing beauty into homes through art.
Pricing:
- Archival prints on paper starting at $13.00 for 5×5 and $195 for 36×36
- Gallery-wrapped canvas prints starting at $67 for8x10 and $403 for 36×36
- Original acrylic paintings on canvas from $375 for 18×24 to $850 for 36×48
- Original charcoal drawings on handmade paper at $45 for 5×7
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.malloryhillis.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/malloryhillisart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/malloryhillisart
