Arts of May: Art Works by Lily S. May

About Lily S. May

Biography of Artist Lily S. May

Early Linocuts:

I’ve been doing art work since childhood.  As a girl and young woman, most of my work/play was in the form of painting.

In my 20s, I became interested in lino and wood cutting, which I did intensively in the early 1970s. I did all my prints by hand on Japanese paper without the use of a printing press. 

As a newcomer to Canada at that time, I was influenced by the strength and beauty of Inuit prints and carvings.  I related to their strong sense of design and shape.

I also loved the look, across the globe, of detailed British wood engravings.  While my work was not meticulously detailed, I was influenced by the use of white line in engravings.

I showed my work in Toronto, Canada in group and solo exhibits during these years.  The first place I showed was a small co-op gallery on Queen West called Me and My Friends.  Later, I showed at another Queen West gallery called Seedlings.

Illustrations:

Then, my life went through a series of changes, and in the 1980s I returned to printmaking after a few years’ absence.  I made a series of prints of animals which were published as spot illustrations in Canadian Forum.  I also did illustrations for specific articles in several other magazines including Quill and Quire and Air Canada’s enRoute.

The 1990s:

In the 1990s, I returned to self-directed work.  I did some further linocuts plus acrylic and gouache paintings.  And I searched for a new medium in which to work.  Though I loved printmaking, I felt limited in the ways I could express myself through the prints. I also found as I aged that carving linoleum increasingly became a physical strain.

Fibre Art:

At this point, because I had little sewing experience, I surprised myself by turning to quilting and appliqué.  The colours and textures of fabric and strong design elements of the works attracted me to turn to this medium.  I entered competitions in 2003 and 2004. Two of my pieces, "Insect Portrait" and "In the Mountains", were shown in the Ontario Juried Quilt Shows of those years.

I used synthetic felt in some of my works and decided to try making merino wool felt by hand, which I still do from time to time to this day.  Again, however, I found I had chosen media that were very physically demanding to do and which I felt limited in what I could express through them.

The 2000s:

As the 2000s progressed, I was searching further for new direction.  I returned briefly to linocutting to enter a juried miniature print exhibition.  And in 2006, one of my linocuts, Animals March, was shown in the juried Biennial Miniature Print Exhibition, BIMPE IV, in Canada.

A Return to My Painting Roots:

2007 saw the death of my father and another surprise for me in that his death drew me back to my first love—oil painting.  This began as an intuition that I wanted to express through painting some of my feelings about his dying. I’ve been working in this medium for the past 2½ years. I find that painting offers me the greatest possibility of expression.  And while I never know what life will bring, I believe that painting is the medium through which I will be able to continue to explore what is meaningful to me.

Path and Themes:

As I look at my history of making art work, I am struck by the non-linear path I have taken.  I have not gone directly to one media or theme.  Yet, I find there are threads that link my work.  Sometimes as I am painting, I make use of gestures that I employed in printmaking and even find echoes of my fibre work in some of the design elements that appear in the paintings.  These are not links that I set about to consciously make—rather all these are echoes of different parts of my life.

When I paint, I follow different pathways into my work.  At times, I have an image in mind that I develop, often with the use of photographs I’ve taken as reference points.  At other times, I work more unconsciously with colour and shape and try to allow the image to grow without preconceived ideas. 

Some of the paintings are abstract.  Most so far are representational—in both realistic and expressionistic modes.  And while there are these variations, when I look at all my work as a whole, I see recurring themes of faces, place, animals and the importance of shape and colour.  In painting, I often do not do a series in a direct sequence, but find that the themes reappear, wending their way into further explorations.

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My work is in private collections internationally. You can see links to my work in the galleries section.

Lily S. May 2009