I’m Adam Hillary. I paint from my studio in Brunswick, in Melbourne’s inner north.

The work is abstract, mostly acrylic and spray paint on canvas, and it comes back again and again to the big forces of nature - water, light, heat, weather, and the invisible signals moving through all of it. I build the paint up thick. Texture matters to me as much as colour. A lot of these pieces are as much surface as image, and they shift depending on where the light lands.

I’ve had a largely structured life. Boarding school, then the military, then technology consulting, founding companies, and professional directorships. Structure has served me well. The art is where the same creativity goes when it isn’t working to a brief - onto paper, onto canvas, or through a camera.

What the paintings are about

Some of them are places. Mosi-oa-Tunya and Zambezi are two halves of the same subject: Victoria Falls seen from above the water and then from underneath it, the spectacle and the turmoil. Barossa Gold is a valley at its most elemental, a blazing sun over the ridgeline, vines in thick raised texture, heat and dust you can feel. Held Aloft is the mulla mulla of inland Australia, flame-coloured flower spikes erupting out of dry ground after rain.

Others are closer to physics than landscape. FFT takes the Fast Fourier Transform, the algorithm that splits any signal into its component frequencies, and lets it drip down the canvas in amber and crimson. Solar puts our sun at the centre of the elemental radio pulses of the universe. Orbital Drift is Earth from space, particle trails arcing and looping like tracked satellites.

And one of them, ICU, was painted during a vigil. Nights beside my partner in intensive care after a medical emergency. The line of primary colour through the centre is the monitor line. Everything around it is the fire of a body fighting to stay. The title has two meanings. I see you.

I work on reclaimed and recovered canvases where I can. Every piece is a one-off original, sealed, ready to hang, signed APHH.

The charcoal series

Separate from the paintings is a set of charcoal figure studies of my wife, Tutu. I drew them in 2020, during lockdown, from photographs and video calls while we were apart, me in Melbourne, her in Bali. They’re the most personal thing on this site. Each is A4, charcoal on paper, framed in natural timber with a white mat.

Originals are $950. Signed limited-edition giclee prints, edition of 20, are $150.

Buying and commissions

Paintings range from $130 for the small studies up to $890 for the large canvases. Everything currently available is on the Paintings and Sketches pages with dimensions and prices.

I take commissions, with no constraints on subject, scale or medium. If you have something in mind, get in touch and we’ll work it out.

Pieces can be picked up locally in Brunswick or delivered at cost anywhere in Australia. International shipping is also available at the buyer’s cost.

To enquire about a piece or talk about a commission, email me at adam.hillary@quintsera.com.au.