An artist’s journey: By ‘following the work,’ Bethanne Hill finds her style

Early on in her art career, it was pointed out to Forest Park resident Bethanne Hill that artists shouldn’t try to have a style — they should just do their work, gravitate to what they love and let their art be influenced by it.

Hill, an eccentric Southern painter and illustrator, said that was the advice that allowed her to do some of her most innovative and impassioned work, the kind of work that people still gravitate toward today. 

Hill is known for creating paintings and illustrations for everything from large canvas commissions to book and CD covers to event posters. Her work hangs in various galleries across the Southeast. 

For Hill, she said, it’s important that she “follows the work” wherever it takes her, which has led her over the years to depict her now-signature whimsical animals, rural homes and poetic landscape scenes, all packed with colorful details that tell obscure and magical stories.

“I don’t worry about if this painting of an abduction of dogs and cats is going to be too weird. I don’t think, ‘Is anyone going to want to buy that?’ That never enters my head because that would chain my ankles and chain my wrists,” she said. “Just don’t do that to yourself. Do the work that is crazy and makes you excited.”

Hill grew up in the South as the youngest of six children. Her parents often told stories of them being raised in Ohio in the 1920s, which resonated with her.  

“I had a father [who] loved to drive. He’d take the long way, the scenic route, the backroads, and that would always have me looking out the window at whatever the landscape was going on,” Hill said. She joked that this was a time before devices, “when children used to look out of car windows and people would have conversations in the car.” 

Many stories were told to her about her parent’s time on their farms during these drives. Hearing stories, she said, has always been very meaningful to her, and sometimes her artwork is inspired by a peculiar NPR interview, a song lyric, a tale passed down in her family or words read from a library book. Her paintings often tell a story, she said. 

When she was young, she remembers receiving positive reinforcement from her family and her teachers that she was good at art. By ninth grade, she was enrolled at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, where she would graduate four years later. From the very beginning of her time there, she said, it was an intensive program where she and her peers worked diligently and daily at their areas of interest.

She discovered an early inspiration for her work when she came across Australian Aboriginal art, known for its heavy and bold outlines that she still incorporates into her work today. 

Hill typically uses acrylics, which lend themselves to her off-the-cuff style of painting and detail-ridden scenes. She loves to use acrylics, because she can wait for them to dry and then paint over them if she needs to make a change or add more later.

“I definitely don’t generally start out knowing what the finished piece is going to look like,” she said, and she lays out everything “really loosely” so that if inspiration strikes, she can go with the necessary changes. 

After Hill graduated Birmingham-Southern College with a degree in illustration and sculpture, she worked for a while as a college admissions counselor for a now-defunct art school in Atlanta. Her job was to travel to high schools in Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia to speak to students. 

“I loved it because it took me into rural areas, and I saw stuff: churches, farms and animals and weird things people decorate their yards with, rivers and creeks and lakes and just all sorts of landscape features that are still appearing in the work I do today,” she said. 

When she had her first child, she changed roles to be a dorm mother, a job with less traveling. The university allowed her to audit illustration classes, which is where Hill said she truly developed the agency and confidence to do illustrations however she liked and veer away from the sometimes cookie-cutter path of illustrators. The classes exposed her to innovative approaches, she said. 

“I found out is if you do the work that you love, you’ll draw the right people to you… Your work is like a magnet for the right people who are mean to see it,” she said. 

Eventually, she moved back to Birmingham to live with her husband, also an artist, to raise their children as she started bringing her art to shows. The Birmingham art community has been beyond encouraging, she said, and she is grateful of how they’ve accepted her work into their homes, books and lives.

To contact Hill about a commission or see more of her work, go to facebook.com/bethannehill.