About Ken Hill

Evacuee to Artist 

   Kenneth William Hill was born in Guernsey and comes, on his mothers side, from one of the oldest families on the Island. He was also the godson of the Channels Islands most famous philanthropist, the Reverend Mignot.     At the age of 11 he was evacuated from the Island during the second world war.   He was taken to Glasgow but after the Clydeside blitz he stayed with the Maxwell family, proprietors of the Galloway news, in Castle Douglas. To console himself from being away from his family and the Island he loved he began landscape painting.  At school he became good at science and started working as a chemist but on returning to Guernsey he realised his talent for Art while making window displays for a shop.   He went to the States School of Art part time for two years and even taught Art while his teacher was recovering from an injury.   Some of his work was sent to the Royal Academy of Arts who then invited him on their 5 year course.  He was the first artist from Guernsey to train at the RA School of Art and one of only 20 to get in that year. He gained his Academy award and exhibited at the Summer Exhibition in 1958.

    He became a teacher and painted all around East Anglia but at the age of 52 he went back to Guernsey and endeavoured to paint full time all around the island, in France, the UK, New Zealand and the USA.  

     He was inspired by the impressionists and post impressionists and he turned his hand to many genres of art.  Some paintings are unusual in that he hid stories within them.  One of his favourite authors was Victor Hugo but he also featured stories by Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis, Elizabeth Goudge and others.