"I take to heart the adage that beauty is the greatest form of protest. Working initially en plein air, I attempt to take what I experience observationally in nature and translate it into a language of personal expression and universal significance. I consider myself an explorer of specific terrains, studying the atmosphere of diverse spaces. In these times of environmental and societal devastation, 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.
My work combines perception in the moment, memory of past space and aspiration of future place. The American west, Italy and New York's Hudson Valley are among the places I explore. My drawings function as research for studio works that are either watercolor and gouache, acrylic, marker or oil pastel. My travel research of plein air drawing combines with invented imagery back in my studio. The combined elements from all the landscapes I explore allows me to create new worlds and vistas that feel familiar, fresh and surprising. New York’s Hudson Valley contributes distant mountains and rows of corn fields; the landscape of Italy’s Crete Senesi and Lago di Como’s mountains has given my work the twisting, intertwining, ordered, pattern-infused hills; the American west’s flora and endless, open space has given my work an intensity of light and color as well as a sense of temperature and limitless, expansive possibility. My observational gesture meets abstract, patterned mark-making, creating an ordered chaos of the natural world."
- Lily Prince (Artist Statement)