Lily Prince “American Beauty” on view September 11 – October 17, 2021

Thompson Giroux Gallery
57 Main Street
Chatham, NY 12037
518-392-3336

Lily Prince
American Beauty
September 11 – October 17, 2021

Thompson Giroux Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Lily Prince. The exhibit, American Beauty, runs from September 11th through October 17, 2021. The exhibition title, American Beauty, is taken from one of the most iconic 1970’s American rock albums by The Grateful Dead but refers to the artist’s search for the inspiring beauty still remaining in our country in these challenging times.

Lily Prince, whose process includes oil pastel drawings and watercolor and gouache paintings as well as acrylic on canvas paintings, has an extensive exhibition and publication record. She has exhibited widely nationally and internationally and has had her work included in numerous publications and commissions. The paintings in this exhibition, Prince’s first solo show with the gallery, are all inspired by her travels to the western U.S., where she was on a road trip to draw en plein air. Her previous series of abstract, patterned landscapes were inspired by Italy and were shown in 2018 and 2019 in solo shows at Littlejohn Contemporary and at 11 Jane St. Art Center. This is her first foray into the particular patterns, color, light and vistas of the western U.S. landscape.

Prince’s American Beauty road trip had her drawing in the desert and on the side of roads, often in 100 degree heat, in the summer of 2019. She considers it a political act to plein air draw—to search for and record the beauty still left in our country in these devastating times. Plein air drawing is the basis for all of Prince’s paintings. Her love of nature and passion for the beauty of specific terrains inspire her studio work, which she does in an 1850’s barn in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her larger studio works are inspired by her travels to capture natural forms, gestures and rhythms of particular evocative views. Lily considers herself an explorer, studying the atmosphere of diverse spaces. She combines illusionistic space with the interpretive mark-making inherent in the abstract ordering of the chaos of nature.

‘These richly colored works speak of a bold mysticity’, critic and poet David Shapiro has written about Prince’s work. ‘But the balance and Eros of the work is strange and strongly painterly, and strong too its reliance on a devastating doubleness of vision. In Prince, one is observing both the pleasures of observation and a severe and principled devotion to abstraction.’

In 2020 Lily was chosen for the prestigious Pollock-Krasner award in painting. Prince has her B.F.A. from The Rhode Island School of Design and her M.F.A. from Bard College. She attended Skowhegan and participated in The Bronx Museum’s Art-in-the-Marketplace Program. Lily also studied abroad on RISD’s European Honors Program in Rome. She has been awarded commissions by numerous hotels and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and her work is in many private collections. Her book of portraits with writer Richard Klin’s profiles, Something to Say: Thoughts on Art and Politics in America, was published by Leapfrog Press, 2011. Prince’s 2nd book includes all of the illustrations for Abstract Expressionism for Beginners, published by For Beginners Books in 2016.

Prince’s work has appeared in the Zephyr Maize article “American Beauty” in 2021 and in Vasari21 and Art Spiel in 2020, as well as in The New York Times, New York magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, the Newark Star-Ledger, New American Paintings, San Francisco Weekly, The Bloomsbury Review, On View magazine, Les Femmes Folles, Compass Cultura, and Crossborder. A catalogue of her drawings, The Ten Plagues, was published by The Paterson Museum. Lily has lectured at Yale, Vassar, Cornell, RISD, SVA, Pratt, and at Artists Talk on Art and has been interviewed on WVKR, WBAI, WGXC and WAMC radio. She is an Associate Professor at William Paterson University.

image of American Beauty,17, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 60″ x 60″ by Lily Prince

Lily Prince
American Beauty
September 11 – October 17, 2021

Thompson Giroux Gallery
57 Main Street
Chatham, NY 12037
(518) 392-3336

Gallery Hours Thursday – Monday 11-5
open till 6pm on Saturday September 11th
Masks required, we are limiting the number of people in the gallery at a time.