User:Robertriddel/sandbox

Noela Hills (16/9/1954 - 19/7/1987) was an Australian graphic artist whose work included illustration, drawing and printmaking. Wanting to go beyond the limitations of silkscreen printing, she developed a technique of colour pencil drawing, where colours were mixed on the paper not unlike the way oil paints are mixed on a palette or on the surface of the work itself. Between 1979 and 1986 she had 11 solo exhibitions of her work, both in Australia and in the UK. She also illustrated 5 children's books as well as many illustrations for newspapers, magazines and book covers, before her premature death at the age of 32. "Gifted with an insightful nature and a dexterous technique, Noela Hills captured our social foibles on paper with her sharpened [Derwent coloured] pencils".

Life and Work

Noela Hills was born in Brisbane on 16th September 1954 and attended the local Wooloowin school and the Kedron High School, where she became a prefect in her Senior year. Between 1972 and 1974, she completed an Associate Diploma in Graphic Design at the Queensland College of Art at Seven Hills (Brisbane), majoring in Illustration. On graduating, Hills travelled to London in 1975, to pursue further study and attended the Central School of Art and Design in Southampton Row. In July 1976 she completed a special advanced course in Printmaking and obtained her Diploma. In London she shared the studio of ceramic artist Alison Britton in Pancras Rd. NW1 and the two became close friends, each influencing the work of the other in various ways. Soon after graduating, Hills was included in "Two Women Printmakers" at the Barnston Festival, Dorset. In London she also exhibited her work  with Britton and Jacqui Poncelet at the Amalgam Gallery and was represented by Mel Calman (The Workshop) in Bloomsbury and later by the Thumb Gallery in Soho.

In 1978 she married Robert Riddel, a recent graduate in Architecture from the Architecture Association, who had also moved to London from Brisbane in 1970. Based in Islington, they travelled in the Netherlands, Sweden and Greece in 1975, Tuscany in 1976 and house-sat in Venice for two months in 1977.

In July 1978, the couple returned to Australia and lived in Sydney, taking the position of caretakers at "Eryldene", Gordon, the home of the late Professor E.G. Waterhouse. Working from this beautiful home on the North Shore with its famous Camellia garden, Hills prepared for the first two solo exhibitions of her art in 1979.

"First Impressions" opened at the Victor Mace Fine Art gallery at Bowen Hills in Brisbane in April 1979. At that time, the Mace gallery was occupying the former Johnstone Gallery. A review by Brisbane-based art critic Gertrude Langer revealed that the drawings exhibited were based on a series of prints done first, but that Hills had " felt the need for more sensuous colours and textures which indeed she achieved" using blended coloured pencil.

The second exhibition was at theRobin Gibson gallery in Paddington, Sydney in May 1979, with 34 works including both drawings and prints. In Sydney as in Brisbane, the reception of the work was positive. ".......a talent for simplification of line and an edge of good humoured caricature that looks at life with sophisticated whimsy" ".....witty and animated cartoon-like drawings,.... in cabaret mood."

The work