30 | APRIL 22 • 2021 

H

illary Levin was scared of bugs 
when she was a little girl.
“I didn’t like being in nature. I 
didn’t play sports — I was not athletic,
” she 
says. “I liked being inside.
”
And she liked doing art projects. 
Growing up in New Jersey, she liked 
watching a TV show that showed people 
drawing characters while telling stories 
about them.
“I thought that was the coolest thing,
” 
Levin says. “I started doing the same thing. 
My mom would walk in the room and be 
like, ‘Who are you talking to?’ I remember 
it being the first time that I drew some-
thing, and I felt like it came alive — I could 
see the process, and others could see the 
process based on my telling of the story.
”
Levin’s mother enrolled her daughter 
in private oil-painting classes at age 8. She 
learned that she loved creating but didn’t 
have the patience for oils — “they took too 

long to dry,
” she says. “I love working with 
acrylics, watercolors. Anything that dries 
fast. I love textures. I’m very tactile — I 
love to touch everything and smell every-
thing, and I want others to feel comfortable 
approaching and touching my work, too.
”
Levin eventually took classes in every-
thing from basket weaving and jewelry 
making to pottery — she even learned how 
to knit (from her future mother-in-law) 
and created the chuppah under which she 
married her husband, Jordan. And though 
she earned a bachelor’s in fine arts with 
an emphasis in painting from Western 
Michigan University and even eventually 
worked as assistant director at the Janice 
Charach Gallery at the Jewish Community 
Center in West Bloomfield, at some point 
Levin fell away from her passion of paint-
ing. 
She found other passions that made her 
happy, too. Cooking became a creative out-

HOME & GARDEN

Rediscovering
her creative passion, 
painter turns home 
into work of art.

 Tapping 
 
 
 
 into
 
 Joy
Joy

LYNNE KONSTANTIN 
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Hillary Levin painted a mural on the kitchen bar of her Commerce home. Each project is hand-painted in acrylic and coated in polyurethane. 

COURTESY OF HILLARY LEVIN

Hillary and
Jordan Levin