Butterflies on Yellow Ochre Painting

Lily has been painting professionally since 2006, exhibiting widely throughout the UK during that time, and now features in collections worldwide - including Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Australia. Lily exhibited overseas for the first time in 2012, with two shows in Barcelona, and one in Amsterdam. She now works from her home studio in Cumbria, just to the north of the Lake District. Lily's work reflects a love of nature, instilled from an early age. Original paintings are inspired by multitude in nature (flocks, shoals, gatherings...) and the flow of that multitude, in glorified representations. Lily’s paintings usually employ an element of collage material, however rather than found material, Lily uses paper copies of her own painting studies. For example, butterflies are meticulously hand-painted, then reproduced, cut, and arranged in a composition on the canvas. Washes of inks are applied, and sometimes additional painted or drawn details, before a clear gloss varnish secures the work and adds an opulent lustre. Work is often oriental in style; Lily is greatly influenced by eighteenth century printmakers such as Hokusai and Hiroshige, and Japanese kimono design. Lily is interested in finding out what it takes to create an appealing aesthetic - how to create a 'flow' and an energy. For Lily this involves striking a balance between presence and absence, dark and light, one colour next to another, symmetry and asymmetry, adding and taking away until something is 'right'. Lily would be happy to discuss commissioned pieces.