Visual Artist Hillel Selznick
New York-born artist Hillel Selznick works in water color, oil and many other mediums. Known for his abstract paintings made up of brushy layers of alternating colors, he is primarily known for his squares and stripes. Hillel uses innovative techniques including 3D pen acrylics, oils, watercolour, pastels and any combination of these.
His abstract and figurative work emphasizes color, light and texture and subjects; landscapes, flowers, still life, beaches, seascapes, abstract and abstractions. He paints many atmospheric, textural pictures using a main color such as green, blue, red or orange. Many of his paintings are in private collections and are peppered throughout several continents.
His Passion for Art
Hillel Selznick’s passion for art came about in a natural, intuitive, educational and professional way. As a child, he spent hours drawing as a natural gesture and the interest increased in his formative stage when he enrolled at the New York University. As a teacher it has also driven him to investigate and experiment.
His passion is to paint and share the love of creation on canvas with as many people as is possible. For over forty years, Hillel Selznick has been painting, instructing and speaking on understanding the meaning of contemporary art.
The Work of Hillel Selznick
The work of Selznick is defined by a constant balance between the monumental and the intimate, which is defined by acute concentration and care. In addition to giving primary importance to the physicality of the materials he uses, his art is commanded by the idea of improving humanity. Each rigorously composed work contains a near-infinite number of expressive emotional fluctuations.
One of the most influential and well-known abstract painters in contemporary times, Hillel Selznick’s work is characterized by a delicate balance between reflection and vitality. His paintings often feature horizontal and vertical stripes of color along an axis. In this finely balanced approach to painting, a great deal of visual delicacy can be seen while still remaining refreshingly calm.
Artistic Style
Fauvism and expressionism are the stages Hillel investigated in his formal training, the ones he took as a reference and the ones that marked him in the evolution of his own ecleptic style. Working with heavy body and fluid acrylic paint as well as inks, his focus has recently shifted to large-scale contemporary abstraction with a passing nod to realism.
Selznick’s Work Process
Sketchbooks and sketches are the first step that generate an idea for the narration of the painting. Until not long ago, it was the composition process itself that generated the forms and elements in a surrealist evolution devoid of any previous phase. A direct confrontation with the blank canvas.