Rose Hilton

2016 | Art, Photography & Fashion

Rose Hilton has been an artist her whole life and has surmounted extraordinary obstacles in keeping to her calling: a strict, religious upbringing, tuberculosis when an art student and a demanding marriage to Roger Hilton. But Hilton has a genius for enjoying life, whatever the problems and for transmitting that pleasure into her works of art. Hilton turns 85 in 2016, one of the last survivors of the glory days of St Ives modernism, and shows no sign of relaxing her industrious work rate. In fact, since her 2008 Tate St Ives exhibition, her productivity and the quality of her radiant abstract canvases seems to grow year on year. Ian Collins has been a close friend of Rose Hilton for over 20 years and has sat for numerous paintings by the artist. Where previous accounts of Hilton's life and art have focused predominantly on the period of her life spent with Roger Hilton, Collins' text sets this period in the context of her whole life. Alongside interviews with friends and family as well as extracts from archival material, their relationship allows for a wonderfully intimate account of Hilton's life, experiences and approaches to picture making.

Ian Collins (Author)