Original Paintings
Cornish Artist Gerry Hillman specialises in fine art, Gerry is enchanted by colour and the magical effects of light.
A Sparkling Bay, North Uist
Cattle graze in a meadow on the machair, caught in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight, while other shafts of light sparkle in the waves offshore.
The old farmhouse and stunted trees stand in the face of the salt winds off the Atlantic Ocean.”
Canvas 20” X 30” (50cm X 75cm)
On Skopelos
A corner of Skopelos town, at the end of a narrow street, a couple of levels above the harbour. It’s mid-morning in April and the spring flowers are in bloom around the town and under the trees in the olive groves.
I made this painting after rediscovering a pastel sketch I made on a visit there around 1998, well before Skopelos became the setting for Mama Mia and a pilgrimage island for the lovers of ABBA. It’s not as quiet these days!
Canvas 20” X 30” (50cm X 75cm)
£1,850
Cheesewring engine hauling a granite train under Stowe’s Hill (c.1875)
On this part of Bodmin Moor there was much tin and copper mining and quarrying for granite in Victorian times. This picture re-imagines what the scene would have been as early steam engines hauled granite and ores from the mines to Looe docks from high on the moor. This train is coming from Kilmar quarry two miles further out on the moor, and now heading for Minions before the long descent to Looe docks. The railway lines were laid on heavy granite setts and this is much as it would have looked on a sunny October morning with mist still hanging in the valley below.
Study on board, 12” X 18” (30cm X 45cm)
£350
The bluebell glade under an aged oak
An aged oak creates the shade for bluebells – a glade now surrounded by much younger but mature beech trees. The old shed has seen better days and Mother Nature is reclaiming the ground through to the far side of the wood before we re-emerge into the sunlit pastures beyond.
Oils on canvas 20″ X 30″
At MacGregor Fine Art, Glasgow
£4,950
Along the Kilmar Quarry railway, in 1875
The granite setts which supported the rails are still here today, embedded in the moor, along the line of the old railway as it winds around Stowes Hill. In the distance we can just see the short-lived coppermine on the side of Sharptor. An early steam engine, called ‘Caradon’, is hauling coal from Looe docks to the mine before going on to load its then-empty wagons with granite from the Kilmar Tor quarry, two miles further into the moor. Here, in passing, we look down on the manager’s house of another granite quarry, up on Stowes Hill to the left. It’s a cold, wet, late-afternoon in early March, and fifteen years after steam replaced horse-drawn, single wagons.
Oils, on canvas 24” X 36” (60cm X 90cm)
SOLD
Along the the overgrown track to an old granite quarry, Stowes Hill
Sheep are grazing along an overgrown track on the side of Stowes Hill, on the moor near Minions. It’s very early spring, and one of a pair of magpies has cheekily plucked a small hank of wool while standing on the ewe’s back. Its mate watches on from the tree above.
Oils on canvas 12” X 16”
At MacGregor Fine Art, Glasgow
£800
Cafe Leon
About 40 years ago I saw a small picture of a woman in a white dress with a maroon cardigan draped over her shoulders, leaning against a wall. It was a snippet from a Sunday colour supplement which intrigued me. I wanted to paint her in a different, broader, narrative context, which is how she came to be standing under a plane tree in the square of a small French town next to a game of boules, and Café Léon.
Buachaille Etive Mor
This iconic peak at the intersection of Glencoe and Glen Etive is seen here across the River Etive. The river flows from the mountain’s slopes before turning and heading off down Glen Etive which lies before us.
Oils, on canvas 28” X 42” (71cm X 107cm)
MacGregor Fine Art, Glasgow
Sold
Strange Presence
Two sisters are stopped in their tracks by an encounter with a denizen of the dark forest, who emerges to meet them in the clearing
Oil on canvas, 32” X 48” (80cm X120cm)
SOLD
On the common between Tremarcoombe & Commonmoor
“Every Spring a couple of ewes manage to find a gap along the moor fence, bypass the cattle grid, and take their lambs onto this patch of common. They have this place to themselves until they’re spotted and taken back to the moor – which could be a week or two.”
Canvas size 20” X 30”
Price £3,400
at MacGregor Fine Art, Glasgow
On the machair
The machair is the western coastal plain of the Outer Hebridean islands. Millenia of seashell deposits have created the soil of this flat, fertile terrain. In spring and early summer it becomes transformed by a swathe of wild flowers. This was mid-summer’s day looking east from the beach towards the hills of South Uist.
On the machair – £4,600
24″ X 36″ (60cm X 90cm)
MacGregor Fine Art, Glasgow
Towards Stowe’s Hill Minions On a late November day
This old track runs parallel with the deep seam of copper and tin ore that was taken from the old Clanacombe Mine behind us and on up, and under, the distant quarry we can see hewn and blasted from the side of Stowe’s Hill before us. The hillside here is pockmarked with mineshafts, the latest of which appeared as a small hole in the main track leading to the quarry in 2010 and is now a gaping chasm which has swallowed the entire width of the track and more and falls away into the 17 levels of underground workings going down to sea level, 1,000 feet below.
Canvas size 20″ x 30″
£2,900
Towards Park Head
I painted this deliberately as a large picture in order to capture some of the sense of the scale of the magnificent North Cornwall coast. This beach lies at the northern end of Bedruthan Steps, a few miles SW of Padstow. The descent is steep with frequent stretches of slithering, broken slate underfoot. The able-bodied who make the effort are rewarded with a wonderful beach and surf, usually to themselves. A good place for skinny dipping.
Canvas Size 60″ x 40″
£6,950
(SOLD)