Hilly Coufreur

Hilly’s art is bold and vibrant and inspired by nature. She loves to experiment with textures, line and colour. She enjoys painting outdoors ‘en plein air’ which gives her work a fresh and immediate feel. “Painting outdoors and soaking in nature and the atmosphere of each location inspires and liberates me. It gives a renewed energy that also seeps back into my studio work.”

She observes the landscape for lines and patterns which she interprets with bold colour and mark making to capture the essence of the scene. She enjoys working wet in wet and creating texture and movement with buttery oil paints.

Hilly loves the rural countryside of WA and with bold oranges, yellows and gold captures the summer landscape to bands of green after the autumn and winter rains. But equally she enjoys recording the beautiful WA coastline in bold blues, yellows and reds.

Hilly was born in Holland and trained as a primary school teacher. With her husband she emigrated to New Zealand for a better lifestyle. They had 4 children and Hilly was a fulltime mother. When the children were teenagers she took a job as a Library Assistant at a local library. Not until all their children had left home did she take up painting. When all their children starting moving one by one to Perth the couple decided to take the plunge and settle in WA. Hilly and her husband now live and work in the hills near Donnybrook WA.

In Australia Hilly joined the Mandurah Plein Air Artists and in 2016 she was the artist in residence at Mandurah’s Contemporary Art Spaces. The residency gave her the opportunity to work on new ideas and experiment with different techniques and loosen her style. In September 2017 she had a succesful solo exhibition ‘Colours of Life’ as a culmination of her residency. 2018 saw her win the Margaret River Art Prize.