Nancy Hild Gallery
“Throughout my career the role of animals in life and culture has fascinated me, in particular with the enduring power of animal imagery to explain ourselves to ourselves and to the world around us in the form of myth, symbolism, stereotype and metaphor. I use animal imagery in the majority of my work in what I consider a still life context, in grand part for the traditional ability of this genre to convey symbolic and metaphoric meaning through careful description. As a figurative painter, this observation of the material world gives me enormous pleasure, seeking out the extraordinary in the ordinary, in the things and beings of everyday life that surround me.
Stylistically, still life paintings of 17th century Europe have informed my work above all with its joy of description and visual language. As a woman, it is the small things and traditional feminine spaces that attract me: the home, the kitchen and the marketplace, where the world of human and animal come together.” – Nancy Hild 2007/8