Featured Artist Sol Hill

Artist Sol Hill presents a collection of large-scale metagraphs that explore inner experiences and our perception of reality. To learn more about his process, visit his website.

 

 

“…all great art is art about art…” These words, by art critic Clement Greenberg, explain that art which relates to the art that precedes it drives the evolution of artistic expression.

 

 

My project—All Great Art Is About Art—is a series that focuses on people looking at art in museums and international art fairs. It blends a look at the historical art discussion of evolving perception combined with a metagraphic discussion of my work on perception by joining science and technology with spirituality and art.

 

 

I am interested in how our sensory perceptions drive our experience of reality and how our inner experiences modulate what we outwardly experience. In an age of increasing polarizations, I am most interested in the energies that are universal. I am in favor of embracing mystery. I accept that truth and reality are not just beyond our ability to perceive, but are largely beyond the purview of our consciousness. In accepting this we relieve ourselves of the prison of certitude. This offers the freedom to see possibilities for personal discovery and growth.

 

 

I explore these sentiments by manipulating the photographic process to record energies that a digital sensor can see, but we cannot. The resulting archetypal images lose the literal detail of photography. They are replaced with a detailed visual texture that is the record of the energetic thumbprint of the universe we inhabit.

 

 

This visual texture in my work appears as a complex lyrical effect reminiscent of impressionism.  They are a sort of impression of immaterial energies which weave the fabric of the physical reality we experience, but point toward something greater which is usually experienced only through extra sensory spiritual experiences or scientific instrumentation.

 

 

A photograph is a recording of light energy. I do not call my work photographs because I use the camera to record much more than visible light. I utilize that data to render the data of the “false exposure” into highly visible artifacts.

 

 

The record of light gives a sense of the subject, but the complex and lyrical color and textural overlay is the product of this something more. Therefore, I call my camera generated images Metagraphs, because they are a record of more than visible light. They capture the energies that surrounds us and affects us, but we do not perceive.

 

 

We know that material nature is fundamentally energy. The visual texture of these records provides a glimpse into this immaterial truth.

 

 

I print on Japanese paper and mount the prints to painter boards and canvas prepared with acrylic.  I varnish with numerous layers of UV protective glazing. The print conforms to the texture of the gesso underneath. The texture of manual glazing creates an ambiguity of process that often leads people to think that my medium is painting.

 

 

I embrace this ambiguity because I appreciate the wonder it encourages. As most people relate to my work as paintings, I produce a single large piece from any image to give a nod toward the unique collectible objects that paintings are. I also produce a tight limited-edition series in a smaller scale. This acknowledges that my process stems from an inherently reproducible medium.

 

Artist Sol Hill invites you to follow him on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

 

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