Lily S. May–Life with Art
The Night of Dread has been a wonderful event in Toronto for many years. It's an event held to face fears, to mock and banish them. On October 29th, the 23rd annual pageant put on by Clay and Paper Theatre returned after a two year hiatus during the pandemic. My husband and I paraded among… Continue reading The Return of The Night of Dread
I'll be showing four prints that I haven't exhibited before at The Printmaking Show at Gerrard Art Space, 1475 Gerrard St. E. (just west of Coxwell) in Toronto. The prints are two linocuts and two block prints made on rubbery-like blocks in 2018 and 2019. The show is from June 29 to July 17. The… Continue reading Printmaking Show
Since returning to Toronto from our week in the countryside, I've begun seriously organizing years of prints. Most recently, I've stored them in large boxes though in the past I had the larger ones rolled in tubes. I began printmaking in 1971 and have moved five or six times since then. So, as I was… Continue reading Gathering
The first sizable snow came to Southern Ontario and Quebec yesterday. At the end of a grey and white day, the sky cleared and a dramatic sunset appeared. Today brought blue skies and sun on snow. I took a morning walk that greatly helped my spirits. Evening, January 17, 2022, looking southwest, Toronto These conifer… Continue reading Sunset & Snow Caps
I don't often use the notes app that's on my phone. So, earlier this week when I opened the app and saw long rambling words, in bold no less, I was at first mystified. I took the following screen shot, then deleted the supposed note after seeing its date. I then remembered where I had… Continue reading A Strange Somewhat Creepy Occurrence
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!
Last Saturday I went for a spring walk in a cemetery in a part of Toronto called Cabbagetown. The necropolis, which I had never walked through before, was established in 1850. It's a large tree filled space with the graves of many people, some with monuments and others with simpler headstones and ground plaques. What… Continue reading At the Necropolis
On November 20, I went to the Brickworks, a park in Toronto, for a walk in the afternoon. It had been a cloudy week but that Friday the sun was shining and the temperature was abnormally warm—18 degrees Celsius. At the Brickworks, I took out my phone to photograph a scene that I found beautiful.… Continue reading On a Walk in November
I've been working on an appliqué that has had twists and turns I could have avoided--sewing, unsewing, repairing it finally. Had I followed what I knew I should do to correct technical problems, I would have arrived at the place I am now much faster. The work I didn't want to face has not been… Continue reading Getting Through the Night
The sky, it feels like freedom, like safety, like a reprieve from this hard time on earth, offering a different perspective that the birds know and inhabit, flying south to the lake in seconds, soaring and diving with grace. I imagine flying with the birds, unchained from fear and vertigo, into the dusk clouds as… Continue reading The Sky
Arts of May 