The sheet of steel, smooth, unglamorous, utilitarian, awaits. For some sculptors, it is molding the clay with their hands that entices, taking a mundane medium and infusing it with soul. For Bob Hillman, it is the allure of steel; exuding strength even in its lightness, changing to a heaviness that conversely displays motion even as it takes form to please the creator. Steel does not talk back, does not argue, does not feign indifference. When the correct tools are used, it is malleable, pleased to make the transition from medium to art. It has a flexibility humans often cannot achieve.

This is important, because for 45 years Dr. Bob Hillman had a passion for helping people with their problems. As a psychiatrist practicing in Santa Fe, he was fully involved in examining his patients’ castles in the air, but assisting in bringing thoses chaotic castles down to earth, and helping them to find a healthy way to live with them. What little time he had left was devoted to his family, playing the piano, and creating stained glass with his wife, Barbara, also a physician. But finally, it was time to take another look at his castles, to seek a new passion, a new sense of process. It was the cleaness and physicality of steel that called to him.

Today, Bob has left behind the clamoring of confused voices to concentrate on solving the problems of metal, the best way to bend, to weld, to create. His wife Barbara, now an artist in her own right, continues to be his partner, a visionary who often helps create the preliminary mock-up that guides Bob as he forms the actual sculpture.

Using bright, primary colors that are as strong as the material he uses, his pieces seem deceptively simple. Upon closer consideration, they evoke primal feelings that draw the viewer in, clearly appealing to a need for art that has strength reflective of our modern world. “Steel bends as people won’t. It may fight you, but won’t ask why you are trying to change it. It’s an amazing medium to work with,” says Hillman. “It requires all the concentration that I once gave my patients.”

Pippin Meikle Fine Art is pleased to present Bob Hillman, an artist for the world of today, a sculptor who draws upon the experience of his past to create art for now that will be appreciated well into the future.