French-born and Melbourne-based, Catherine Hiller is an abstract expressionist painter whose work concentrates on powerful, emotional moments in time: human snapshots rendered through energetic and ethereal strokes. Working exclusively in oil on linen, Hiller builds her compositions in dense layers of oils, beginning always with darker pigments before working upward into colour, a process she describes as one that "symbolises the ups and downs of life, with the overwhelming positivity and resilience that I choose to adopt in my life." The result is a body of work that is "raw and visceral" by design: in her own words, the product of "instinct rather than intellect".
Hiller's practice can be described as synaesthetic in nature: an ongoing effort to give form, texture, colour, and movement to what is otherwise intangible: emotion, memory, sensation, the non-physical residue of lived experience. Attuned to her surroundings, she translates every visual, aural, or emotional cue directly onto canvas, unmediated by conscious thought. Working across several canvases simultaneously to allow each layer to dry, she paints daily from her studio in a heritage-listed former cart and lorry factory in Port Melbourne, guided by an ever-changing soundtrack that shapes the mood and momentum of each session. Colour, for Hiller, is a universal language: a fury of hues that fuse, clash, appear and disappear, echoing the volatility of human emotion itself.
Hiller has painted since the age of twelve, absorbing the colours and moods of the countries she lived in before settling in Australia, including her native France, along with the UK, Switzerland, and Kenya. She studied art in Paris before pursuing a successful, decade-spanning career in advertising in the UK, before relocating to Australia in 2004 and has lived and worked in Melbourne since. Hiller's practice has evolved considerably over three decades, beginning in a realist mode before shifting toward expressionism and the development of her Entangled series: a body of work exploring emotion and connection through the depiction of couples in colour and movement. Her practice has since moved into complete abstraction, affording her, in her words, the freedom to express emotion "honestly and absolutely, through colour and in the rawest possible form."
Hiller has exhibited in solo and group shows across France, England, and Australia, including as one of 100 emerging artists selected for The Other Art Fair (2016), Sydney, and as a featured artist in Contempo at KAB at KAB Gallery, Melbourne. Her work is held in private collections across Australia, Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Hiller's forthcoming solo exhibition, Fleeting Wonder, opens at Eagles Nest Fine Art Gallery in December 2026.
