Sourced from NPR by Sommer Hill | July 25, 2022
Seeing herself reflected in art allowed Sommer Hill to feel comfortable in making her own
Artist Sommer Hill as a child
They say to find out what you really want, go back to when you were a child.
When Sommer Hill was a child, she really wanted to be a painter but was never great at it. She was discouraged because, in art class, her paintings were never the most beautiful.
In the third grade, she was given a project to create a portrait. Using the skills and tips that were taught in class, she created an oval, drew two interesting lines in the middle of the oval, put eyes in the middle of the face, and was on her way to drawing a face.
Presenting her portraits, she stood in front of the class and explained her technique. She recalls looking at her work and thinking, "We were given the same skills, why do theirs look so professional while mine look so amateur?"
Even still, she would bring her paintings home and her mom would hang them up because she loved them, saying, "Oh my gosh, did you do this all by yourself? This is SO good!"
Sommer Hill
Sommer most enjoys painting because it's a forgiving art. If you don't like what you put on paper, you can mix colors and make new ones. She can release creative juices and use what has inspired her, allowing that to pour out in ways she may never have imagined.
She always wanted to paint beautiful pictures but decided she needed to change what beauty looked like, and redefine what beauty meant to her.
Throughout school, she was introduced to artists such as Picasso, Van Gogh, and da Vinci, but never saw herself in their work. They painted people, and green pastures with cows, and whatever else was in front or around them — but that was not what she saw around her.
Sommer Hill
Once she learned about the Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance and artists like Kehinde Wiley and Jean Michel Basquiat, she felt more seen through their works which inspired her to paint abstract pictures, portraits, and sunsets. Taking pieces of inspiration she could use as a focal point of her own paintings. She was so inspired by Frida Kahlo’s work and her movie, that Hill once used Kahlo’s eyebrows as a focal point for a painting. Another time, she painted herself and how she felt at that moment.
Self portrait inspired by the activist Spook
Sommer says that she paints when she is moved by natural emotion, nature, and other forms of art, specifically creative writing. She also draws inspiration from pain and finds that pain in the world or in her heart can be crippling. An activist in St. Louis named Spook once told her, "Pain is energy. You have to learn to channel that energy into something productive." So now, she sometimes channels the pain into art, into a painting.
Even if the picture doesn't turn out aesthetically pleasing by society's standards, she says that it is still beautiful that she was able to create something. Her paintings may not be a Basquiat, but they are hers and she loves them anyway.
Sommer Hill is the social media associate for NPR Extra, and a graduate of Howard University, originally from St. Louis. Describing herself in one word today, it would be curious. Yesterday, it would've been zealous.
