Age, art and an antidote to idleness

The beginning for Richard Hill started with an end.

Specifically, the end of his restaurant. It was three or four years ago — in the middle of the global recession — when he had to shutter the Birchington Ice Cream Parlour, the eatery he had run for more than five years in Kent, England.

“They just weren’t coming through the doors,” says the 61-year-old grandfather.

Hill, then in his mid-50s, decided to take up art. He hadn’t touched a brush in more than two decades, but as a youth growing up in Southampton and attending Bermuda Technical College, he loved to draw and paint. 

As a youth, he custom airbrushed cars, but that was a lifetime ago.

Now, without his business, he created art as a sort of relaxation, a therapy. 

There were no more 16 hour days. No more waking up early to help his wife make the cakes and scones. No more kitchen prep. No more peeling potatoes.

He missed the customers but he did not miss the responsibility of running a restaurant.

Art, he said, was a last resort, something he did only when his previous purpose fell apart. No, he says, there is no comparison between the grind of running a restaurant and creating art.

“With art, if you’re in the mood, you can just knock it out. You can just keep going. Do you know what I mean?”

Now, he is back on the island bartending and helping his sister take care of his father, who is in his 80s and has vision problems.

“I figured she needed the help,” says Hill.

This past week, his work has been exhibited at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI) in Paget. It marks the sexagenarian’s first exhibit.

He flew back to England to see his wife yesterday.

“It’s a back-and-forth thing,” he says by way of explanation.

On Wednesday, in a second floor space inside the BUEI, there are the fruits of his work. There is a painting he did with coffee of a photographer he knows back in England, where he has lived with his wife for the past 12 years. 

There is a pencil sketch of a close-up of an expressionless baby’s face. There is a painting of a trio of  longtails with Bermuda in the background. There is a piece depicting a kitten snuggling with a baby duck. There is a gray oil painting of a marsh in England.

“I don’t want to stop,” he says. “Hopefully this is the beginning of something.”