WVCSD Artist of the Week: Hilary Kleinman

Warwick Valley Middle School eighth-grader Hilary Kleinman is a young artist whose creativity is sparked by Japanese pop art, and who finds her own creative inspiration in the colors around her and from within herself.

“I’m a huge fan of anime and manga, and a huge fan of rhythm games,” said Kleinman. She shared that one manga in particular, “Blue Period,” by Tsubasa Yamaguchi, gave her a new perspective on art, deepening her enjoy of it and helping her understand how art can be an emotional outlet. The story is what’s known as a “slice of life” manga, for its depiction of everyday experiences.

“It’s a very dramatic piece about art,” said Kleinman, “which is not a bad thing. When I don’t have another outlet for how I’m feeling, I usually just pick up a canvas and start painting. Even if I don’t know exactly how I’m feeling.”

This is where color comes into Hilary’s personal approach. She said that when she is inspired to create, she’ll try any and every color. Sometimes, she finds that the color she’s looking for isn’t always something on the typical color palette.

“So, I go in between the colors, see what I like and what that represents,” she said. “I pick the color that catches my eye and think about what it makes me feel; what that represents. Then I kind of just splatter around on the canvas. My art is definitely more abstract!”

In Kleinman’s art class with teacher Leah Mednick, many of their classroom projects are prompt-based, and Kleinman said she enjoys the challenge of working inside those parameters. Currently, the project Kleinman and her class are working on, is to recreate a piece artwork they drew when they were younger, and to allow the recreation to be influenced by the work of an established artist.

“The artist uses a lot of shapes and colors in his drawing, and that makes it very colorful,” said Kleinman. She also said how much she loved experimenting recently in class with white, black, and grays. The project was to create a horror movie poster.

“I chose ‘Edward Scissorhands,’” said Kleinman. “We had to figure out how to make values, mixing black paint with water, making it lighter.”

Mednick has enjoyed having Kleinman in her class and looks forward to seeing what she has in store for everyone to see. “From the moment Hilary comes into the art room until the moment she leaves, she is working and focused the entire time,” said Mednick. “She’s already such a dedicated artist, always working hard to achieve more and grow. The careful attention she gives each project definitely shows.”