Pursued Interests - Hillary Butler
Pursued Interest - Hillary Butler
24 June - 6 August 2023
Oil paint and digital illustrations
Hillary was born in Adelaide, Australia and travelled the world extensively in her childhood and early adulthood. Currently, she lives with her husband and three children in the Australian outback town of Roxby Downs. She always nurtured a love of the arts but believed talent in any medium was more a product of luck than anything else. If you weren’t already a prodigy by five-years-old, you had ‘missed the boat’ so to speak. Like many people, Hillary dabbled casually in different art practices, mostly led by Pinterest, and fit small projects into the margins of her life.
Hillary had two near-death experiences in 2020 which left her living with a significant disability and adapting to the effects of a chronic illness. The twelve months immediately following this personal upheaval was spent in physical recovery and personal reflection. It was here that Hillary re-evaluated the trajectory of her life and the place for joy and fulfilment within it. Several years earlier, her husband had introduced her to the TV series “The Joy of Painting” which he’d watched growing up in the United States of America. The episodes feature cultural icon, Bob Ross, demonstrating the alla prima or ‘wet-on-wet’ oil painting technique. Hillary immediately fell in love with the show. The peace and serenity Ross exudes as he paints beautiful landscapes were not only instrumental in Hillary’s recovery, but also inspiring through the philosophies of life Ross sprinkles throughout his narration.
The two that most resonated with Hillary was his belief that ‘you don’t have to be blessed by Michelangelo at birth’ to be an artist, and that ‘talent is just pursued interest’. If you’re interested in something, you spend time on it. If you spend time on it, you get better at it! Praying he was right, Hillary decided to bring art into the forefront of her life and launched her painting journey in 2022. Hillary immediately fell in love with the medium, the colours, and the process. Having faith in the ‘pursing’ side of the interest, Hillary named her terrible first painting “Step One: Pursuing Interest” and forged ahead.
In 2023, she expanded into digital illustration and ‘Anu & Ann Artistry’ was born. Now, when not spending time with her family life or her career in psychotherapy, she pursues her art interests with enthusiasm!
Workshop opportunity
