Marian Hill studied illustration at Kingston University, graduating in 1997. She went on to work as an illustrator and has seen her work published on many book covers, also on a series of postage stamps. Over recent years she has been pursuing her personal artistic practice, developing in particular her location based work. Marian grew up in Somerset next to the Mendip Hills, the colours and textures found in this landscape have inspired her work. She is also drawn to water, the rivers, weirs and estuaries near her Bath home and the seaside and harbours discovered on holiday. A significant influence too is her love of old printed papers, decaying surfaces and weather beaten textures which led Marian to choose paper collage as her medium. This may not be so unusual, however the way in which she skilfully manipulates her material is. Tiny fragments of paper which have been selected from magazines and discarded books for their colour and gradient are intricately fixed next to each other to build up the image. Degrees of light and shade are rendered using just her sourced materials creating wonderfully detailed and subtly nuanced collages. The final stage is to laser cut the birch ply on which she has worked, to an irregular outline which accentuates the complex collage process.