About Lily

Lily is an abstract artist and curator from Newcastle, recently graduated from Newcastle University with a Masters in Curating Art, previously studying BA Hons Fine Art at the Northern School of Art.

Her striped paintings are based on the structure and colour of skies. Her abstract work has formed from her love of photographing and painting the northern skyscapes around her. Her practice began with painting surrealist-style landscapes, progressing to focus solely on the patterned sky within these paintings, ever decreasing them in complexity, reducing down to different organizations of horizontal stripes. To Lily, her pieces resemble skies due to mimicking the structure/colour palettes from them, however her pieces are ever changing, often being focused solely on repeating patterns/colours.

As her work continues to develop, Lily aims to include collage/fabric into her stripes, due her to recent experiments with tape and her background in experimental textiles. Her interest in Abstract Expressionism as well as love for colour field artists like, Mark Rothko are her main driving forces behind her work with other key influences including Patrick Heron, Josef Albers, Ian Davenport, and Rachael Clewlow. 

Currently, Lily uses acrylic paint, mixed thickly, and applied onto a wet base of cream/yellow acrylic. The colours, which have been meticulously decided upon and thoroughly mixed are repeatedly layered, using tape for the finishing layers to ensure a clean, controlled finish. 

Control within her stripes is something she finds very integral and something she really enjoys. Her work has battled between colour/control for some time, with her current pieces gaining the balance she has been wanting.

Over the course of her degree, as well as developing her practice, Lily has gained a love of curatorial work, curating 2 shows completed as part of her course. Through her masters course, she has had opportunity to curate a group show at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle as well as completing a 2 month placement at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, assisting the Programme Team with general duties and curatorial research for upcoming shows.