Landscape Painter. Born is Revenna, OH on January 28, 1882. Hills was raised in Olivet, MI and attended Olivet College. Art studies were at the Art Institute of Chicago, Cooper Union, New York, Academie Julian in Paris and privately with Arthur Dow in New York. After four years of travel and study in France, Holland, and the south of England, she settled in Laguna Beach, CA in 1912.

Hills served as president of the Laguna Beach Art Association for six years and helped raise funds to establish the present art museum. A bronze plaque was placed there after death on June 13, 1930. She is remembered as an organizer, lecturer and for her community work in Laguna. Her early works are mostly dark tonal interiors, genre and figure studies; whereas, in California she turned her attention to landscapes and marines. Using a highly colorful palette of both watercolor and oil, she painted in a decorative, Post-Impressionist style.

Member: California Art Club (President); Laguna Beach Art Association (founder)

Exhibited: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1924, 1929.

Awards: Bronze medal, Panama-Calif. Expo, San Diego, 1915; bronze medal California State Fair, 1919; landscape prize, Laguna Beach Art Association, 1922, 1923; prize Orange County Fair, 1925.

Works held: Laguna Art Museum; Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, CA; Springville Museum of Art, Utah; Fleischer Museum, Scottsdale, AZ; The Irvine Museum, Irvine, CA.

(Source: Hughes, Edan Milton, "Artists in California: 1786-1940," San Francisco: Hughes Publishing Company, 1989.)