Lenore Ramm Hill - Finding My Way Back to Art
Born in Durham, North Carolina, I started drawing at an early age, obsessively copying book covers, drawing the cats, and attempting anatomically incorrect drawings of horses. At the age of 8, I took drawing classes for kids at the Durham Arts Council. At age 11, I took adult botanical illustration classes at the NC Botanical Garden with Ruth Brunstetter, with whom I studied for 7 years. My mother grew up in a florist’s shop and studied Horticulture, so plants and flowers were already an important aspect of my life. Ruth taught me how to use gouache (opaque watercolor) and render the realistic style with which I paint today. I learned from Ruth the stippling technique (lots of dots) for shading in her pen and ink works. For three years, I took art classes at Orange High School with Elizabeth Dell-Jones. From her, I remember learning the most about rendering reflected liight, which is what really enables a painting to "pop."
When I was 17, I started a jewelry business, using sterling silver and gold-filled wire with semi-precious stone beads. At age 18, I became the youngest working member of Womancraft, in Chapel Hill, an artists’ coöperative, where I sold my jewelry and botanical illustrations. I still make many of the jewelry designs I made over 25 years ago, but others evolved over time, as I continued to experiment.
Upon matriculating at Duke University, I realized how much I wanted to be able to afford groceries and enjoyed programming, so I earned a bachelor’s in Computer Science. I was a software engineer and IT Analyst at IBM and Duke University, respectively, for 18 years and painted very little during that time.
In September of 2018, I resigned from my position at Duke and am now focusing primarily on my art, using watercolors, gouache, colored pencils, and ink. I'm also making more jewelry than ever. I originally joined Etsy in 2009, but I've never been able to devote as much time as I've wanted to my shop until now.
I live with my husband, Jack and our cat, Bonnie. He tapes all the shipping labels to the packages. He also is an excellent cook and ensures that I'm not a starving artist after all. ;) Jack and I moved from Hillsborough, North Carolina to Socorro, to New Mexico in October of 2024. We love it here!
