Colin Hill

"Colour Coded", an in-progress shot. 2018-2019

This is a project that I received grant funding from the Toronto Arts Council to produce. It is a series of four oil paintings that depict the process control patches, or printers blocks, found on most consumer product packaging tThese patches show the colours used in the printing process). These paintings are reproductions of the patches found on hair dye which show women of different ethnicities on the front of each package. The selection is meant to represent the diversity of my Toronto neighbourhood and Toronto-at-large.

When I began the project I wasn’t sure what the process control patches would look like for the different packages. Would they be different for each package as the patches often are? I discovered that they were all the same, which lends itself to some interesting interpretations of the work.

While the four paintings are more or less the same, they are each named after one of the four dye colours. Two examples are: Pure Diamond and Midnight Violet. You can probably guess what the women on those covers looks like.

Incomplete and Unrelated Objects.

Found and salvaged objects (brick and neon) with shelf. 2019

This work of brick and neon explores how context, contact, and
proximity affect and alter the meaning of disparate objects, giving
them symbolic coalescence.