During his 30-some years as a professional artist, Kenneth Hilker made a name for himself as a painter and, more recently, a sculptor. The Missouri native moved to Maryland to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. After graduating from the program in 1990, Kenneth began putting down roots in Baltimore. He balanced his career as an artist with his job as a carpenter, painting in the early morning hours before he was expected at a job site. Kenneth took on the role of primary caretaker when he became a father, working during school hours and on weekends. This continuous drive to create led him to many gallery shows in the area, a residency at The Vermont Studio Center, and, more recently, a Masters program at the University of Maryland.
In 2024, Kenneth Hilker graduated from the University of Maryland with a Master of Fine Arts, where he focused his studies on the nature of the creative process. Much of Kenneth’s work is a reflection of how he sees the world and how he breaks down space. “My art comes from an act of doing, from the act of creating, and it is often only at the end of this process that I find the language that fits the piece.” His unique ability to let visuals and feelings guide his creative process allows a meditative, visual balance to shine. His pieces are captivating in this way; his meditation evokes feelings for which the viewer has difficulty assigning words. As someone with dyslexia, Kenneth’s studies at UMD focused on this concept: how do words and visual art relate, and how are words important in the visual art creative process? Book Ends and his other showcased work from this time are his meditations and answers to these questions.
Kenneth spent many years expressing himself through landscape paintings. In these oil paintings, Kenneth breaks down landscape into geometric spaces. He finds blocks of color and uses an objective perspective to articulate pieces of the land and how they relate to each other. Though these paintings had been successful, Ken wanted to grow further. While at UMD, he tapped back into his carpentry skills and found his way to the woodshop. He re-connected with wood and learned to incorporate metal into his process. Through his newly learned skill of welding, Kenneth created his own hardware and gained a new autonomy over sculpture with this ability. Kenneth has continued to paint throughout this process, expanding his relationship with the medium by simultaneously creating sculpture and fostering a new expression of creativity as the relationship between two- and three-dimensional work informs each other.
Kenneth resides in Baltimore City, Maryland, holding a studio residence at School 33 Arts Center in Federal Hill. He continues to find inspiration from and connection to the outdoors through time hiking, biking, and skiing with family and friends near his home, in Vermont, and beyond.