Will Hill

Now that I have greater freedom to determine what kind of art I make, I find I’m moving more towards work that takes its lead from within the processes of making, rather than the articulation of any pre-existing ideas. To this end, and because I’m by nature prone to analysis and-explanation, it seems important to ensure that the working process stays ahead of any attempt to define it.
I’m reminded of Corita Kent’s rules of the studio: ‘Rule 8: Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They are different processes’
I’m only starting to recognise a recurring set of preoccupations that goes right back to my early years at art school: the impulse to find some harmonisation between the visible world and the constructed idea, between the organic and the geometric, and perhaps also between the spontaneous and the deliberate. The impulse to develop a matrix of strategies that can hold these opposing concepts in some kind of equilibrium, keeps cropping up intermittently in different forms over 50 years work.
The study of typography over the last 30 years has unexpectedly provided a route back in to making art-works. Finding my way back (back?) toward painting, or at least to working in ‘painterly’ terms (while stopping short for now of actually using paint)I find I’m actually articulating concerns and values I explored in writing about type: Ideas of inside and outside, permeable and recessive shape.