Hilario Gutierrez

Hilario Gutierrez - On New Year’s Day 1994, Hilario faced the monolithic stone temples of Monument Valley, Arizona and recognized for the first time his true nature. He returned home two days later and began to paint. As an Arizona native with a rich ethnic heritage consisting of Aztec and Yaqui Indian from his maternal side and Austrian from his paternal side, Hilario always identified with the spirit of the American Southwest. This unique identity became evident with his first paintings. He was drawn to acrylics as his medium and he experimented with color and form. He studied the work of master artists, in particular Gerhard Richter and Dan Namingha, to develop and perfect his technique. Within a year he was selling his work. In 2010 Hilario was profiled as a Style Maker in Luxe Interiors + Design Magazine. In May 2009 Hilario opened his first museum exhibition at the West Valley Art Museum (an affiliate of the Phoenix Art Museum) in Surprise, Arizona. In August 2006 his work was reviewed in the Chicago Sun-Times. Hilario has had seven solo shows since 1998. In April 2009, Hilario published his first book, Chaos On The Canvas - The Art of Hilario. The book features more than 62 pages of text combined with 35 full color images of Hilario’s work in an oversized lay-flat format. It allows the reader to explore the vision, depth and theory behind some of his most stunning works. Artist’s Statement: As an Arizona native, I possess an innate awareness of the quiet struggle and fragile balance of the Sonoran Desert. My abstract style expresses the harmony in the desert’s chaotic emotion of line, color and form. Emotion is the soul of my work inspired by the natural and man-made architecture of the landscape of Arizona. I use a diversity of subjective and non-subjective images combined with distinctive surfaces and shapes to explore the internal life of my art. My explorations draw you in and allow you to wonder, remember, and awaken. I believe the eye can touch an image and reveal sensation. I create conjoined colors; so, like a prism, there is no separation of one color to the next. Thus, my work evokes a different emotion depending on one’s nearness to the canvas. Public and Corporate Collections: St. Regis Hotel, Vancouver:; Ronald McDonald House; University of Chicago; AllianceBernstein LP, New York City; McDonalds Corporation, San Diego; UBS, Dallas; Ocean Club, Laguna Beach, California; Shell Commercial, Scottsdale Arizona.