There’s at least one thing that a pandemic can’t stop in its tracks — creativity. In fact, it may even be more necessary than before.
For example, the pandemic did not fundamentally change the work of northern Colorado artist Mary Hills.
Hills makes images of outdoor scenes drawn from her everyday environment, local places she likes to go like Red Fox Meadows and Rolland Moore Park. Her subjects include backyard views and more iconic ones like Horsetooth Rock. Also, natural areas and gardens, trees and flowers, rivers, and pathways.
These are places you could easily visit — often — even during a pandemic.
Hills’ images are full of bright patches of color and broad shapes, a sense of sun and shadow, and a sense of reflective calm. She calls her work “abstracted realism.” It’s about real places but filtered through her as an artist working in mostly pastels.
The results are not predetermined when she approaches a new piece and they are not based on one experience but many.
