# James Hilleary

James Frances Hilleary (January 21, 1924 – April 10, 2014) was a working architect and painter who gained prominence as a member of the Washington Color School movement.

## Biography

James Hilleary was a native Washingtonian.
In 1942, Hilleary graduated from Gonzaga High School in Washington, D.C., after which he was immediately drafted into the Army. After his military service, he enrolled at Catholic University. Hilleary had a passion for music and art throughout his life, having spent countless hours at the Phillips Collection while his father, who was also a musician and artist, studied art there under C. Law Watkins. Accordingly, Hilleary double-majored in music and architecture, graduating in 1950 with a Bachelor's degree in architecture.
After graduation, Hilleary went into the private practice of architecture and remained a principal at his own firm until joining Rysson Maryland Corporation in 1976. Hilleary served on the executive committee of the Potomac Valley Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, wrote extensively for local and national publications, and was the recipient of several local and national awards for design excellence.
Though Hilleary had started a career as an architect, painting had been his passion since childhood. Therefore, Hilleary began creating the paintings like those that he loved but could never afford.
He was married to Margaret Keirn, the daughter of Brig. Gen. Donald J. Keirn, and had children Cecily, Leslie, Sidonie, and Keirn.

## Critical recognition

Hilleary was associated with the Washington Color School. His work follows the general nature of color-field painting but is largely concerned with the manipulation of sequential stripes.
Hilleary received critical acclaim throughout his career. Early in his career, the art critic Barbara Rose lauded Hilleary's "assured geometric abstractions" in an article in Artforum magazine, while The Washingtonian called his work "particularly promising". Late in his career, the prominent art critic and professor Donald Kuspit described Hilleary as a "master of color". And Washington Post art critic Paul Richard said that Hilleary was "admired enthusiastically by some of the smartest art minds in town."
Hilleary "is best known for his commitment to creating harmonious, expertly executed canvases in variations of a signature style." His signature style revolved around his "interest in patterns as well as colors—patterns not simply as decorative displays of color, but as on intricate arrangement of what the Futurists called lines of force." Despite the centrality of lines and angles to his work, though, Hilleary has been described as a Lyrical Abstractionist artist. That description may reflect the evolution of his art. Washington Post art critic Benjamin Forgey observed that Hilleary "at first adopted the then-reigning hard-edge format utilizing relatively subdued optical color combinations" but over time his work evolved to show a "gradual release of lyrical energies, in which softer colors and thin, translucent overlays of paint have been added to the logical structure of interlocking vertical and diagonal stripes."
Hilleary's work is found in numerous museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Buenos Aires.
Arts foundations and corporate collections that hold Hilleary's work include the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, the United States Federal Reserve Bank, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Hilleary's work is also found in important private collections across the globe, including the collection of prominent art historian Linda Nochlin.
Hilleary has been the subject of three major retrospectives:
* James Hilleary: Painting Retrospective at Edison Place Gallery in Washington, DC (November 1, 2003)
* James Hilleary: A Retrospective at Peyton-Wright Gallery in Santa Fe (July 2012)
* Modernism: James Hilleary and Color at the University of Maryland University College, an exhibition which included a full-day symposium on his work (December 2012).