Softly into the Night, 30″x42″, mixed media, 2015
I came to art after a long career in psychology, dedicated to the wellbeing of children and families. Two years in the Peace Corps in Africa from 1967-1969, the diversity of my own extended family, the preciousness of the people I have served in my career, and a life in music have all found their ways into my art. Perhaps not surprising, people especially, find their way into my art.
My work focuses on watercolor paintings, mixed media and collage, and a practice of drawing from life. Although based in realism, paintings, and especially the processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of my collages, make visible the fragments of experience from which we construct our narratives of a whole. These images carry the viewer beyond representation into layers of meaning, ambiguity, and imagination. Narratives are inferred rather than demonstrated, and questions asked rather than answered.
I draw nearly every day, in nature as well as in darkened concert halls, where the challenge is to keep a receptive ear and a loose hand in order to capture both performer and sound, with their rhythm, flow, and intensity. Many of these drawings illustrate music and dance reviews written in collaboration with my husband, Eli Newberger, and single authored essays for “The Berkshire Edge,” a newspaper of arts and ideas.
I am represented by Galatea Fine Arts, 460B Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA, the Artful Mind Gallery in Lenox, MA, and am a signature member of the New England Watercolor Society. My work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Harriet Tubman Gallery, Galatea Fine Arts, the Saint Botolph Club, the Tavern Club, and the Brookline Arts Center, among others, and in group exhibitions including the New England Watercolor Society, the Cambridge Art Association, and the Danforth Art Museum. For more information, please see my Artist Vita.
Please click here for a YouTube video of my June 8, 2014 gallery talk at the Danforth Museum about my award-winning collage “What are we doing? Where are we going?”
Illuminating the Hidden Forest, a catalogue of art and ideas from the forest
“Lily and I enter the forest in early morning, I swathed in insect proof clothing, mushroom knife in pocket, bear bell on hiking pole, and with folding stool, notebook and art supplies on my back. Perched on my stool, I draw, paint, and record in words the many insights the forest offers. I am surprised every day by the forest’s astonishing variety, beauty, power and wisdom.”