A member since the early 1970s, Hilary has been an inspirational volunteer and artist.

Art has always been a guiding force for this native of Victoria, British Columbia, who graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1969. As a sculptor in welded steel and bronze, Hilary finds that her best work emerges when she sets out to do something that may not be possible in her medium. Because steel is a relatively new sculptural medium compared to bronze, wood or stone, there were not examples of certain techniques and it forced a kind of innovation where Hilary became an artistic pioneer. 

Her work can be very small or very large, rough or smooth, monochromatic or colourful. It can range in subject matter from a tiny sculpture of a flower, where the curve of the leaf makes one think it is real, to a ten inch bronze or steel female figure that seems human in its detail and beauty, to the fantasy faces that command the wall, to a study of a crow, steely-natured, with blue-black torch-coloured wings, to a life-size figure such as Silhouette, chunks of weathered steel speaking of power and wild nature. The pieces that give Hilary the most pride and joy is when the steel medium and the artist’s spirit combine successfully. It is then a marriage of material and subject matter and a true work of art. 

In a video presentation about her artistic life that was shown at the Opening Reception at the Spring Members’ Show, Hilary remarked: “With a group like Muskoka Arts & Crafts, it is a burgeoning population of artists. We are in fact one of Muskoka’s natural resources in my opinion. We have the lakes, the rocks and the trees, and we have the artists.”