Lily S. May–Life with Art
I love seeing creative work outside museums and galleries--work done by artists and non-artists alike. So I was delighted to see colourful banners made by community members along the main street of Consecon when we were on vacation. In case the writing on the last banner is too small for you to make out, the… Continue reading Community Banners
When I began looking into self publishing a retrospective book of my prints, I saw that it might not be simple to do. Indeed, that's the case. After stalling because of extremely high prices for scanning the works, I've adjusted my plans and will do something more modest--like creating a section of my site devoted… Continue reading Paintings I’d Forgotten About
Among the prints I've been sorting through these past weeks was this acrylic painting I made in 1991. As I look at it, I see several images coming together--something like a skull, the moon and even a toreador. I didn't plan the image ahead of time. This was one of many images I painted as… Continue reading Moon Skull Portrait
In 2020 I posted some of my mother's enamel works. This time I'll show you a few of the many paintings she made in her life. Her name was Bernice Barsel and she lived from 1922 to 2014. Her styles varied from fanciful to realistic and the paintings here are done in both watercolour and… Continue reading My Mother’s Artwork, II
The war in Ukraine has got me thinking about my maternal grandparents. I know my grandmother's story more than my grandfather's, perhaps because he died when I was very young. She, Esther, was born in Odessa in the late 1800s when it was part of Russia. She and her family fled their home because as… Continue reading My Grandmother
I've been drawing some objects in our apartment that I love. These include a wooden hawk that we once bought at a lawn sale in our neighbourhood, a ceramic cookie jar that we bought decades ago at a large art fair in Toronto and a little stone elephant that I can't recall how we acquired.… Continue reading Household Jungle
This is another gouache painting that I made this week. I had no specific plan other than to irreverently remove the black ink layer from a small prepared scratchboard, apply gouache paint to the board and later scrape into the paint! It wasn't until after I saw the painting from afar that I realized it… Continue reading Fire!
I've been working on The Innocent Heart for around two weeks. I again deliberately let the piece develop as I worked as opposed to planning it ahead of time. It's a gouache painting layered with stamps I made. It has gone through massive changes. And not until earlier this week did I recognize the work… Continue reading The Innocent Heart
My most recent work is a departure from the scratchboard work I've been doing. I've been thinking of painting for several months and finally turned thoughts into action. I was fortunate to have supplies in good condition that I bought a few years ago--two gesso boards and tubes of paint. So, off I went into… Continue reading Colour
A few weeks ago, while absent mindedly looking at a piece of artwork I'd done in 2018, I suddenly saw that it had a strong resemblance to the covid-19 molecule, spike protein and all. What surprised me the most was that I hadn't noticed this sooner. Here's the painted repurposed print that I made in… Continue reading What?!
Arts of May 