I came upon these two sketch/paintings I made in 1987. They’re in watercolour with ink lines. I enjoyed making and, now, viewing these paintings because I made them with a certain amount of freedom. I didn’t sketch the images first, but applied the watercolour and ink directly to the paper. The images turned out less constrained this way and feel, to me, more lively.
A note about my names: you may be able to see that the signatures on my earlier work do not read Lily S. May. Instead, as in these paintings, I signed them with my birth name, Susan Barsel, or initials. Some of my early prints are signed the same way or with two versions of my former married name: Susan Herman and Susan Barsel-Herman. I didn’t formally change my name to Lily S. May until the mid ’90s. So, all these names refer to me, just at different times in my life.
Arts of May 