This week we welcome Lily Prince, a painter who has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. Prince has a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, an M.F.A. from Bard College, was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in painting in 2020, was artist-in-residence at the Olana historic site, and attended residencies at The New Museum in NY,BAU Institute in Italy; and Galerie Huit in France.
She travels frequently to draw en plein air especially in France, Italy, Ireland and across the U.S. especially in the west.532 Gallery in Chelsea, which represents Prince’, included her in the group show “In the Belly of the Valley” and in their booth at the Spring Break Art Fair in L.A. in 2024. The Brattleboro Museum in Vermont recently included her work in the 2024 exhibition ”In Nature’s Grasp.” Prince will be having a show at the Albany Airport this fall. She maintains a studio in an 1850’s barn in New York’s Hudson Valley.
In the artist’s words:
“Throughout history dark times have often prevailed, part of the ebb and flow of civilization, humanity, nature, pop culture. Hope is always linked, however lagging and reluctant– waiting for its turn to re-emerge. Day and night, sun and moon, good and evil: two sides of the coin of existence.
So many epithets regarding light and dark, day and night —reflecting hope in difficult times—come to mind. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a new Dawn. It’s darkest before the Dawn. Day is considered positive, night turning to day signifies hope and rebirth, while day into night implies a time of less clarity, confusion, anxiety. I have often dreaded night, a time when details and boundaries are blurred, a literal and symbolic loss of vision, the possibility of uncontrollable, mysterious energy emerging.
So many great song and film titles come to mind that reflect a collective unease of the dark, a passage into unknown territory, unleashed passions where all bets are off. Long Day’s Journey Into Night. In the Heat of the Night. A Hard Day’s Night. Night Fever. Night Move. On the Dark Side of the Moon. Because the Night. All imply an unknown, unchecked passion, structureless abandon. Horror films typically take place at night, vampires awake. There are Noir films, graveyard shifts, night sweats. Energies are peaked, rules are broken, boundaries erased.
Although by circadian circumstance I have tended towards the nocturnal I have at the same time always been afraid of the dark and dread the daily relinquishing of daylight. While mostly a daylight landscape painter for many years, quite a while ago I painted a series of plein air paintings at night. While unable to see my colors on my palette was liberating and waiting for color to emerge out of the darkened landscape was mysterious and mesmerizing, it made me nervous as hell. There is a palpable energy at night when nature’s seemingly arrested rhythms are actually teeming with an unseen life force. Quietly pulsating to a more primordial beat. Real or imagined unwanted creatures, or just doubts and fears avoided in daylight, emerge from out of boundless depths and threatening crevices. Our anxieties propagate, loneliness is intensified, dread is unleashed. A time to hide under the covers.
My paintings are all inspired by parts of plein air drawings done while traveling constantly and attempt to express my spiritual connection to nature, while acknowledging the coexistence of growth and decay, clarity and darkness, despair and hope. From where we stand now societally night is the new day. The basest primeval behavioral instincts seem to have taken over. It is hard to hold on to the light. But so far, every day, the sun also rises and for that we are grateful.”
See more of Prince’s work on her website and Instagram.
Gorgeous paintings.