The one-person show presents a selection of Lily Prince’s recent paintings depicting her impressions from the American southwest and Lake Como, Italy. Prince’s vividly colored plein air paintings reflect the essence of these two regions and call for a celebration of the beauty nature has to offer.
For the first time, Lily Prince: Both Sides Now pairs watercolors and acrylic paintings from two of Prince’s series Lago di Como and American Beauty. The show takes its title from Joni Mitchell’s iconic 1960’s song signifying the value of looking at life from different points of view. Prince combines plein air process and studio practice, drawing observationally in nature to record her impression of a place with a patchwork of pattern, color, and undulating form. Often adding color and combining various drawings together when she returns to her studio in upstate New York, she further develops a visual language that is at once deeply personal and universally significant. In such challenging times for society and the environment, her vibrant work serves as a beacon of hope and beauty and, perhaps, as a callto action. Prince remarks, “I consider it a political act to immerse myself in the landscape to record the natural beauty lurking there: perhaps to incite the arousal of sentiment, a stirring of connectedness.”
Chief Curator and Gallery Owner Carrie Chen comments “Lily's painting is refreshing, surprising and disarming. She has developed a vernacular that is uniquely her own. The deep space, vibrant color, and patterning are playful, harmonious, strong, and full of personality.”
Considering herself an explorer, Prince studies the atmosphere of diverse spaces. She portrays the pulsating rhythms found in undulating hills, rippling fertile fields, echoing distant mountains, and shifting skies. Whether of the Italian landscape ofLake Como or Tuscany, or closer to home in the U.S., these paintings represent a visceral connection to nature and to the energy emanating from a specific terrain. Prince’s works give the viewer the sense of flying through them; hovering, as the earth shifts in subtle twists and turns. This slightly unsettling vantage point merges with vivid color, pattern, and deep space to create a view of a world filled with light, hope, and resurgence.
Prince remarked “When I began this series, summer 2019, I never could have imagined what we would all be going through in these extremely difficult and dark times. I thought then that the world was damaged enough. Now I feel I'm on a mission to record views of nature in our broken country to remind us all how much beauty still exists, to inspire us to connect with our higher selves, to retain hope to carry on and still dream. I take to heart the adage that beauty is the greatest form of protest.” The beauty of Prince’s work stands in strong defiance and takes on political significance in these times of concerted environmental and societal devastation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lily Prince has her B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design, her M.F.A. from Bard College and attended the Skowhegan residency. Prince has exhibited widely nationally and internationally and was awarded commissions including the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and numerous hotels. Prince was awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in painting in 2020. Prince was Artist-in-Residence at historic site Olana and was awarded residencies at Draftsmen’s Congress at The New Museum, NY; BAU Institute, Italy; and Galerie Huit, Arles, France. While recently on sabbatical, Prince worked en plein air in France, Italy, Ireland and the American west. Recently, she was interviewed for ArtSpiel magazine; Vasari 21; Zephyr Maize; and The Art Life on Radio Kingston.
