Steven R. Hill Biography

I have been an artist since the day I picked-up my first pencils and crayons, making marks on most surfaces. I won my first big award in the 4th grade with "First Place" in a city-wide art contest sponsored by the Red Cross in my hometown of Boise, Idaho. It was a drawing made from memory of the masked surgeons who had removed my tonsils years earlier – an experience which obviously made a lasting impression.

Making art was the beacon that allowed me to survive high school, college and the U.S. Army, where I became an illustrator, after the Vietnam era draft had sealed my immediate future. In 1972, I returned to university and earned an MFA in painting from Washington State University, studying with notable artists like Robert Helm, Gaylen Hansen and Robert Sterling, before moving to Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, to help set up a private art school.

The art school was before its time, but I sure took to island life, teaching art at Lopez High School, before starting my own successful graphic design business. Selling the businesses in the late 90's to paint full-time has proven to be totally rewarding. I have won many art awards and some prestigious honors over the past decade. My passion is to find special places, both home and abroad, and explore those with every element of my psyche dialed into the joyous, expressive and interpretive language of painting on-site.

My work has now won 65 top awards in major juried fine art competitions worldwide since 2003. It resides in 3 art museums, many private and corporate collections and has been published in several notable art magazines and books. I have exhibited in Florence, Italy, NYC and was nominated and voted into the prestigious Salmagundi Club in NYC, 2018. Perhaps the biggest honor was winning the annual purchase award from the Superintendent of Zion National Park in 2015, putting my painting in the park's permanent collection alongside Thomas Moran and other notable artists from over the past 100 years