Mary Lou Hiller is a lifetime arts educator and painter in watercolour and acrylic. She works out of her home studio in Waterloo. Educated at the Universities of Waterloo, Western Ontario and the Ontario College of Art she has continued to be instructed and inspired through many workshops in Canada, the United States and abroad. Some of her notable mentors are Bert Williams, Gordon MacKenzie, Donnah Cameron and M. Douglas Walton.

Her work has been exhibited in solo, group and juried shows and been honoured with a number of awards. Consistent sales from exhibitions, galleries and commissions have brought both private and corporate placements. She is a member of the Central Ontario Artists Association, the K-W Society of Artists, the Cambridge Centre for the Arts and, for many years, an active volunteer at the Waterloo Community Arts Centre. She has recently joined with five painters from northern and southern Ontario under the name The Six Degrees of Freedom to exhibit as a group.

"Painting is the excitement of observation and creation. It is a give- and-take process of communicating what I see and how I feel while allowing the painting to surprise me with endless ways to do that. My content is largely drawn from my travels and personal experiences. My 'style' is naturalistic, sometimes expressionistic, with colour, light and form being the most dominant elements."