This theme revealed itself, somewhat surprisingly, when sifting through the archive of interiors and figures...
Read moreSelf Portrait with Still Life
Sober and Provident Parents
NY Interior with self portrait 2
Self Portrait and Cat (1963)
Artist Reflected, (Avenue B series 1985)
Artist Reflected II, (Avenue B series 1985)
Artist Reflected III, (Avenue B series 1985)
Artist Reflected IV, (Avenue B series 1986)
Artist Reflected V, (Avenue B series 1985)
About Self Portraits:
This theme revealed itself, somewhat surprisingly, when sifting through the archive of interiors and figures. The pictures mainly come from Lillian’s time in New York, perhaps when she couldn’t afford a model to humanise the interiors she was then painting.
They are not traditional self-portraits, in which the artist is usually centre stage, the portraits here being more integral with the surroundings, just one part of the composition and not the point of it. The portraits sometimes appear to question the viewer, and perhaps this quizzical aspect is part of Lillian’s self discovery as an artist, as person, as if asking: How do I fit in? What is my place?
If that was the question, then it must have been answered because Lillian did not produce any more self portraits until twenty years later, when she revisited one particular image. Rendering a series in bold watercolours, playfully pushing the limits of how one scene can be seen, the artist with brush poised is painted in radically different ways. ‘Here I am’ she seems to say, ‘make of me what you will, for I know who I am.’