Jeremy Hillhouse could come up with “elegant and beautiful designs on a bare-bones budget,” said Ronald Otsuka, Asian arts curator at the Denver Art Museum.
Hillhouse, who died Nov. 10 at age 69, worked at the museum for 28 years, many of those as the designer for exhibits.
In memory of him, Hillhouse’s paintings will be shown at a retrospective in January.
His paintings are on display at Craig Hospital, Palettes restaurant in the Denver Art Museum and in many homes and businesses, said his wife, Christine Hillhouse.
“People still talk about” many of the exhibits Hillhouse designed, said Otsuka, who sometimes collaborated with Hillhouse. “He could use just paint and plywood.”
Hillhouse liked to paint the Eastern Plains, usually in vivid colors and often abstract style. Most of his paintings were “very large — 6 feet by 6 feet,” his wife said.
“He found fascinating things everywhere,” Otsuka said, “even the sidewalks, things other people would think mundane.”
As a designer, Hillhouse decided where to place the paintings, the colors for the walls and the lighting, his wife said.
William Havu, owner of the William Havu Gallery, where Hillhouse’s paintings are on display, called Hillhouse “one of the most underappreciated artists around.”
“He had a great understanding of the relationship between the sky and the land,” Havu said.
Hillhouse was in poor health after a stroke five years ago, and surgeries forced him to spend the past several months in a wheelchair. But he kept painting until a few days before he died, said his son Erin Hillhouse of Denver.
“He painted when he could hardly do it because he’d lost some control of his extremities,” said his son Jasper Hillhouse of Norfolk, Va. He titled his last picture “Scribble Scrabble.”
“He was always interested in the beauty that surrounded him,” said Jasper Hillhouse.
Hillhouse also formed close friendships and “had a deep capacity for caring about others,” Erin Hillhouse said.
Jeremy Hillhouse was born in Colorado Springs on Sept. 3, 1940, and graduated from Cheyenne Mountain High School. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Colorado College in Colorado Springs and his master’s of fine arts at the University of Oregon.
He started out in the forestry program, but when he went to Colorado College, he “discovered fine art,” said his wife.
He married Christine Wilcox in 1967.
In addition to her and his sons, he is survived by four grandchildren and his brother, William Hillhouse of Denver.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
