Rob Hill
Artist Profile: Rob Hill
Abstract Vision
By Renée Marino
With a seemingly endless supply of painter’s tape and vision in equal parts, Rob Hill has already made a big impression on the art scene in his new home in Denver, Colorado. In 2022 alone, Hill has shown a runway collection in the Denver Arts & Venues Cultural Fashion Runway Series: Street, taken part in the Colorado Black Arts Festival preview exhibition at Understudy gallery, released a collection of 100 unique NFTs, and locked down a residency with the Art District on Santa Fe for their Emerging Artists Residency Program, where he worked out of Museo de las Americas through the end of October.
Rob Hill with his works Move (left) and Unity (right), acrylic on canvas, 4 x 6 feet each, on display in the Black Love Mural Festival exhibition at the McNichols Civic Center Building in Denver in July 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.
Born in Los Angeles in 1986, Hill made Denver his home in 2020. Dedicated to an ever-evolving vision for himself and his art, Hill continues to build on his use of abstraction through various media, from painted canvas to public art to fashion. Whether working with paint, wood, metal, or fabric, his signature style utilizes clean-line triangles that he organically and repetitively layers in bold color palettes.
Rob Hill, Harmonization, 2020, acrylic, oil, fabric, and ink on canvas, 4 x 5 feet. Image courtesy of the artist.
With such a diverse range in media, it comes as no surprise that Hill also stands by a vision for diversity and unity of people. In a series of four pieces including Harmonization, he chose to work with figures for the first time. These works of acrylic, oil, and ink on canvas also feature elaborate fabric details to create the subjects’ clothing. Whether in clothing or art, Rob expresses that fabric is a commonality that we all share. [1]
Similarly, for his subjects’ faces, he uses many shades to portray different skin tones. Hill opts to create identity-full characters, rather than identity-less. This idea of unity is pervasive in Hill’s work. His message comes across through the use of shared symbols: fabric, triangles, and unique color combinations, inspired by historic and modern-day cultural markers. Through abstraction, Hill opts for a high-visibility visual language, rather than blending in.
An installation view of Rob Hill’s FABRIK / Cut from a different cloth, 2022, fabric on canvas with metal stand, each panel 40 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
In FABRIK / Cut from a different cloth, Hill achieves a quilted, power-clashing effect with several different patterned fabrics—a technique which he has also used for garments on the runway. His latest exploration into textile work harkens back to some of his original interests. In high school, inspired by a local brand, he started painting on his own clothing. “Clothing was my first canvas. I knew about fashion, and I was a creative kid, but I didn’t grow up around art. Paint was a tool for me then.”
The model Sunaina wearing clothing by Rob Hill at the Denver Arts & Venues Cultural Fashion Runway Series: Street on July 23, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.
After high school, Hill joined the Coast Guard and traveled in the service for 8 years. During that time, he didn’t make art, but he did start a clothing brand. Once he got out of the service and had more time to himself, that creative spark came back. “I just took a leap and decided to start painting on clothes again. I was doing a lot of research on Egyptian history and learning about their art and color palettes.”
Rob Hill, City View, 2018, acrylic on wood, 4 x 4 feet. Image courtesy of the artist.
Hill soon began painting on stretched canvas instead of clothes. The triangles in his work evolved out of his initial interest in Egyptian history as well as Native American and African history. [2] His color choices are inspired by these historic interests and other pop-culture references from the 90’s, such as television shows like In Living Color, Martin, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Hill also credits his powers of observation. He makes note of new scenery and colors wherever he happens to be in order to refer back to them in his work—from sports teams to mid-century modern design.
With a personal creative practice in full swing, Hill went back to school to learn technique and fuel his aspirations. Now, just after graduating from California College of the Arts in May of 2022, Hill has jumped into the vast pool of abstract art and is ready, as he puts it, to start a new lane for himself.
Rob Hill, UNTITLED FREEDOM, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 3 x 4 feet. Image courtesy of the artist.
Hill’s fresh angle is none more evident than in his work UNTITLED FREEDOM, which exudes playfulness. Within each triangular section he makes use of a different set of colors, style, and perspective—an exploration which creates a colorful chaos with no one landing point for the eye. In one of the triangles, we see green, gold, red, and black prominently featured, the same as in many African countries' flags.
At the center of the work, a caramel-brown triangle with a striated texture gives the impression of wood—one of Hill’s favorite materials to paint. It is significant that he features the wood in this way as a space of relief, surrounded by all the other candy-like, fantastical colors and shapes.
The contrasting sections seem to reference various pieces he has created previously, recapping and revealing the vast array of possibilities available to him and from which he can work. Fittingly, UNTITLED FREEDOM has also functioned as a bridge for him into the new territory of cyberspace, becoming Hill’s first ever NFT.
Rob Hill, BLEU 11, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 6 x 10 feet. Image courtesy of the artist.
The painting BLEU 11 also seems to flow endlessly with potential. Here Hill layers triangles over a rectangular sequence, creating even more depth for the eye to wander. The variations of blue hues are not only meant to guide the eye, but also the heart of a viewer.
“I like that people get to find something that connects with them within my work,” says Hill. There is something innately human and beautiful about the way an abstract work such as BLEU 11 connects us to our psyche, and through that, to one another, through color and form. Hill’s work sparks emotion and ideas, while also leaving room for the viewer to go through their own processing.
Rob Hill, Designer, 2018, acrylic on wood and mixed media, 4 x 7 feet. Image courtesy of the artist.
In the mixed media work Designer, Hill effortlessly brings a mid-century modern aesthetic to the forefront with acrylic and wood. He emphasizes the pyramid shapes in the painting by using fine lines in silver and gold, creating a buzzing energy between them with a nod to art deco as well. For this and other, similar works, the color palette consists mostly of muted, earthy tones, accented with pops of bright turquoise, orange, or red hues for added interest. Designer could seamlessly transition from the gallery to the showroom and might provide the perfect pairing to an Eames lounge chair.
Rob Hill, Peace, 2020, acrylic and ink on canvas, 3 x 4 feet. Image courtesy of the artist.
Amid the potent energy of 2020, Hill created Peace. This work emphasizes overlapping triangles with changes in color—a dreamy combination of pastels calms the noise of the recurrent transitions. “A lot of my pieces start with color. I like to go through a natural process, and layer as I go.” The consistency of his process is apparent; it’s important for him to make progress each day. However, he isn’t stuck in a rigid formula. He works with a piece in its own time, so that “even when I mess up, I can pivot and feel like it happened for a reason.”
Rob Hill, FABRIK / Cut from a different cloth, 2022, fabric on canvas, each panel 40 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Overall, Hill's technique and style is sure to entice. Like the pyramids he was initially inspired by, his expansive vision reaches into nearly every corner of modern art and culture—unafraid to move from the gallery to the runway to virtual reality and back again. This ease of artistic movement may be due to the fact that his vision is set even higher than we can see; like his triangles, every painting and new exploration is part of the bigger, unified whole.
Renée Marino (she/they) is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and DJ currently residing on occupied territory of the Tocobaga, Taino, and Seminole people and descendents. They are an advocate for the arts, for transformative justice, mutual aid, abolition, decolonization, and community driven healing.
[1] All quotes come from my virtual interview with Rob Hill on August 22, 2022.
[2] Egyptian, African, and Native American cultures all have an extensive history of art, craft, and design, within which they utilize symbols, such as triangles, to tell stories and honor life through a visual language. Most prominently, the Egyptian pyramids are thought to represent the solar rays and a connection to the afterlife. In African fabric printing and weaving, we see a wide range of patterns, which often use triangles as the simplest unit of the pattern. In Native American weaving, especially Navajo, triangles are also used as a basic unit of design. Historians and outsiders alike may hypothesize about the meanings of triangles for these cultures; however, this speculation will never equate to the truth in the context of shared knowledge passed down through oral and visual tradition within the cultures themselves.
