Hilary Brace

Hilary Brace is known for her highly detailed charcoal drawings on translucent matte polyester. Her wildly eventful landscapes and cloudscapes emerge from an explorative process of adding and rearranging abstract areas of light and dark, or snippets of images. As a scene suggests itself, Brace gradually brings the composition into focus, until it achieves near photographic veracity. The finished works are both intimate and sublime and, real and surreal.

Brace also creates large scale tapestry weavings that begin with detailed digital drawings. Working with the TextielMuseum in Tilburg, NL, on a sophisticated Jacquard loom, Brace uses a unique combination of translucent, metallic and luminescent threads that give the weavings a light-reactive quality: they may change in response to the light source or position of the viewer, bringing them to life—like light in nature.

Recognition for Brace's work includes a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Drawing, grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, and a California Arts Council Fellowship. Solo exhibitions have been favorably reviewed in major publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Art in America and The New Yorker. Brace's work has been exhibited in numerous museums in California, including Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, Riverside Art Museum, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Scripps and Pomona Colleges. Museum exhibitions nationally have included the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID; Telfair Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; Real Artways, Hartford, CT; and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA.