OAKLAND — A 95-year-old Oakland artist who spent decades depicting scenes of Black life through radiantly-colored oil pastel works — many of which were featured in galleries and museums across the Bay Area — died in a fire early Wednesday at her East Oakland home.
Hilda Robinson was killed when flames tore through her home shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday in the 2900 block of Partridge Avenue. She lived alone and was pronounced dead in her home from burns and smoke inhalation, officials said.
The fire was sparked by a wall furnace and appears to have been accidental in nature, according to Oakland Fire Department spokesman Michael Hunt.
Robinson’s death left many fellow East Bay artists and gallery owners mourning the loss of an artist whose work had recently been displayed the de Young Museum’s Art of Living Black exhibit in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Her works also were expected to be featured on utility boxes across the region, according to her family, who confirmed her death in a statement that hailed her “radiant spirit” and “unwavering love for God, friends and family.”
“This whole thing is tragic,” said Randolph Belle, co-owner of RBA Creative, which first displayed her artwork in the 1990s. “She was just really beloved. And she had been here long enough to where she was not only one of the elders, but also one of the pillars.”
Robinson was known for depicting scenes of Black life in luminous colors etched in oil pastels. It was a medium she preferred ever since she was a junior high student in Philadelphia, when the first and only Black teacher of her youth handed her a set of Crayola crayons.
She later earned a master’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and upgraded to French oil pastels. All the while, she marveled at how oil, dye and wax could be combined into such a “flexible, functional medium for art” — almost as if it “has really been created just for me,” according to an interview she gave to Redline Pictures that was posted on YouTube last year.
She found inspiration for art everywhere she looked.
“My life is constantly in touch with the fact that I produce art,” Robinson said in the Redline Pictures interview. “I use those things around me – everything that is around me.”
“Being a Black person in the world is easy for an artist, because the subject matter is there – it’s active, it’s colorful and I work with that color, with that activity,” she added.
She often shied from the limelight — preferring to be a quiet working artist, mother and grandmother, friends and family said. Yet in art circles, she continued to gain esteem well into her 90s. Her art often invoked the work of Archibald Motley, the famed Chicago modernist painter, Belle said. And while she specialized in showcasing people, she also occasionally depicted landscapes with buildings and bridges.
“She always had a project she was ready to work on,” said fellow Oakland artist Jeff Kunkel, who knew Robinson for 30 years and co-authored a children’s book with her. “She was going to make art until she could not anymore.”
Her artwork exuded “a joy of life,” said Robert Abrams, owner of Abram Claghorn Gallery in Albany. He routinely displayed her work, which included vivid depictions of women attending church, children clutching flowers and couples heading out for a night on the town.
“It was definitely all full of joy. It was refreshing” Abrams said. “Maybe that’s why she lived so long.”