Nancy Lilly 
FEATURE ARtist March 2019

Insights are gained through time and a certain kind of ‘reflection.’  

​I’ve been told that I was three years old when I began drawing, on everything.  Family stories abound with me drawing stick figures on freshly painted walls and designs using crayons to ‘color’ my bedspread.  I do not know why I’ve always been driven to make art, I only know I always have.  When I was five I remember my father carrying me in his arms through the National Museum of Art and feeling overwhelmed with all I saw. 
​       
​I have worked in many different mediums, but over time, I find that pastel gives me the immediacy in handling and strength of color to better express the subject at hand.  My surfaces are always a complex build up between warm and cool color.   Always in a hurry, pastel doesn’t make me wait.  As in life, what you see ‘up close’ and what you perceive from afar are different.

Lately I have focused on a series of historical architecture and landmarks that as a Texan have contributed to my identity and life perspective.  The effect of light and shadow on these man-made structures create for me something of a giant still life that echo the impact of the doors and windows of life.  The doorway or window can be very old, but the path and perspective encountered is almost always new.

Nancy Lilly Website

PSST:  As a relatively new member of Pastel Society of Southeast Texas, it is a treat to learn more about you and your work. 
 What facet of this particular art society brought you to become a member? Are you involved with other pastel societies and at what level of participation?
 
Nancy Lilly: The Pastel Society of Southeast Texas won my admiration first and foremost because of the organization’s website.  A thousand years ago I worked in ‘high tech.’ I was responsible for a portion of the Dell website that included page design, content, translation, product placement, etc.   If you’ve not ever had a job that focused on testing the effectiveness of a website and its content, you may not be aware of just how critical and permanent the impression the online experience is for the viewer or the user.
 
To me, PSST really had their act together.  The art work featured in their galleries was really very good.  The information on framing, photographing artwork was especially helpful.  I’ve not ever run across another art society that has the quality of content that PSST has. For example, the Pastel Atelier content available to Members, how fabulous is that for an artist coming to work with the pastel medium?  The Resources page, how wonderful is that?  It is challenging to learn about all the different kinds of paper and pastel out there.  This by itself showed me that the organization had depth of knowledge and experience to share.
 
Clearly, a lot of thoughtful planning and leadership has gone into the formation, as well as the ongoing day-to-day participation of this pastel society.  I recognized that I could learn a lot from this group of artists, so I joined although I live about 150 miles away.  When I make the six-hour round trip trek to attend a meeting, I’m going to an art store! How great is that?  The meetings are well organized and frankly, everyone is so nice. 
I always leave a PSST meeting or show wondering if I should move to Houston.
 
I’m the membership chair for the Austin Pastel Society.  Believe me, it’s a great way to learn everyone’s name​

PSST:   You have shown wonderful architectural paintings in our members’ show recently, and we see your variety of subjects online. Some of the works include Texas-historical subjects, portraiture, landscapes, personal reflection, and still-life.  What is your current theme or subject matter? Is there an over-arching idea that connects your viewer to your passions in life or to you as an artist? 
​
Nancy Lilly:  OK, let me repeat the question again, “Am I working with a “theme” …is there an over-arching idea behind my artwork that connects a viewer to my passions in life or as an artist?”  
 
​I would have to say, not really.  But that is changing.  Or let me say, I’m beginning to understand what I’m going for.
 
I’m 68 years old.  I’ve been retired for four years.  Before that, the only way I can explain things is to say that I’ve been in a ‘vortex’ of work as a marketing professional in enterprise software.  Not exactly being an artist.  I worked about nine hours a day, six days a week. That is the life of a high tech worker.
 
Strange as it may seem, I’ve always been artistic.  I always flunked math, hated technical information.  I formed an identity for being an artist in early childhood.  I have a degree in Fine Arts, and I actually drew from a live nude model five daysa week for four years.  I very much wanted to ‘be an artist’.  But life got in the way.
 
I decided last year that I was not trying hard enough.  I thought it through, and decided I had about 12 more years I could count on to be productive.  I had God-given talent, when was I going to get serious about being an artist?  So, I decided to really try and make something of myself as an artist.  To work with some discipline and with a plan.
 
I had read that it is good to do a series. I decided to do the Missions in San Antonio because my husband and I happened to go down there one day.  No conscious reason drove me.  But as I worked on them, the unconscious feelings emerged, and I began to get in touch with what I call my “submerged processing.”  
 
I am the last person to describe herself as religious or spiritual.  In fact, such notions spell almost instant discomfort in me.  But as I worked and looked, and looked, and worked, I began to think about the “roads” to God.  And if I were to sum up what I was striving for in the Mission series, it would be the draw, the instinct, the beauty and need to find God.  
 
It is mighty hard to find a culture that does not have as its foundation a core of faith.  And I think this is part of the core of what it is to be human. Wrestling with mortality, and trying to make the most of life.  The path to a church or a mission, is a journey toward understanding and toward hope. The erection of these structures in an almost complete wilderness, the intention behind their construction, I think that is what makes them so attractive.  All those hundreds of years and thousands of feet that have passed through the doors of the Texas missions, that is a testament is it not of what it is to be human?
 
Painting the missions revealed my primary love and fascination, and that is the wonder of light.  Light on an object, on a face, on land.  How light bounces, how light communicates.  Many, many artists talk about light, and I’m another.  
 
My next planned series will be on pigs.  My dog groomer keeps two pigs at her shop. They fascinate me.  I did one portrait of one of the pigs.  Their eyes have a very human intelligence to them. There is a lot to be learned from animals, there is not that big of a gulf between being a pig and being human. That is my take at present.
 
If you were looking for a way to knit my artwork to a single purpose or focus, I would say it is the expression of light.
 
For the most part I like what is called “hard light.”  That is strong high contrast light and shade.  The patterns of shade intrigue me.  Edward Hopper and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio are famous for this kind of light, in different ways, and for very different purposes.

PSST: Your style seems to be informed by several fine art masters, and you offer diverse work for your clients. What artist or institution has been your greatest teacher in bringing you to your distinct style and color choices? Can you recommend a workshop teacher, book, or video for our members?

Nancy Lilly:  That is an interesting question.  I went to the University of Texas at Austin, with a fervent desire to draw as well as Michelangelo and Leonardo.  I have to say I did learn to draw.  Loren Mozely (1905-1989) was my Life Drawing instructor.  He wore a three-piece suit and locked the door to the class room at 8:00 am sharp.  He would walk around with a walking stick and rap the drawing pads and make pithy remarks. One day he announced to the class that I had learned how to draw. That for someone to actually learn how to draw was a rarity.  I did not swell with pride, I was a nervous wreck, but it goaded me into going forward. I learnedthat perseverance pays off.  This was instilled in me.  As for learning art techniques, or being grounded in color, or perspective, I learned nothing at UT.  What I got out of my college education was the certain knowledge I had to go out there and figure it out myself.
 
Hands down the biggest influence in my life was my father.  My earliest memories include my father carrying me in his arms through the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.  As a very small child I loved to draw, and this delighted my father.
 
The family had a collection of prints of Degas, Lautrec, Monet, Van Gogh, and so on in a flat box.  I was four years old, and I would sit at the marble top coffee table and ‘copy’ them in Crayola on Scott towels.  I was frustrated that the Scott towel would tear so easily and I pined, terribly for the big box of Crayolas.  That was my first formal introduction to art.
 
My father was a Marine Corps fighter pilot, but he had a love for art and art history.  The house was full of books on art, and again, I spent many an hour being told to sit still as he measured my face for a sculpture.  Daddy didn’t draw all that well, but he had a brain that could sculpt.  He was forever cranking out another sculpture in either stone or wood.  I was not given to 3D, but I could draw.  Daddy would ask me to draw the sides of a person’s face by referencing a photo of just the front, and I would oblige him.
 
It was really to please my father that I pursued art.  I was given a book on Degas when I was 8 years old.  I still have it.  I poured over the illustrations.  Then Janson’s History of Art entered the household, and I poured over that book, actually reading it time and again as I grew up.  By the time I got to UT, I knew a lot of the standard art history taught in school, which honestly, isn’t all that much.
 
Fundamentally, the love of art history never left me.  It was my refuge.  I’ve regularly read art history books.  A book of art history has been by my bedside since I was 14 years old. Literally.  

I taught art appreciation for Senior University in Georgetown for a couple of years.  I had great attendance, over 85 people came, and not even for college credit!  That was when I got in touch with how important art is to me.  But I love it.  Art history is the history of mankind, of faith, of nation building, of philosophy.  To miss out on art history is to miss out on life. Reading about artists will provide insight to yourself and your own struggle to make art.  For example, if you think you’ve poured all you have into being an artist, I challenge you to read the biography of Willem de Kooning. (de Kooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens, 2006)
 
If you want to be a good artist, if you want to WORK at being a good artist, you have to do two things: You have to learn to see, and you have to learn how to draw.  Most people put down what they “think” is there.  That is not seeing. To copy a photograph is not to see.  That is copying.  
Seeing is taking notice of the values and play of light.  Then there is proportion and perspective.  Painting is interpreting how you feel about what you see.
 
The best way to begin to learn how to do this is to copy the great masters.  This is not a popular method these days, but it is tried, and it is true.  When you copy a master, you learn how they thought, and, this is important, you learn the technique and materials used. 
I have copied Odilon Redon and Edward Degas.  Degas put me on my quest for fixative that works, well, that will work for me and how I want to work.  I’m giving a demo on that to the Austin Pastel Society in January.  My current approach to pastel employs a different application of ground and fixative to achieve the texture and layers I need.  I would never have gotten there if I had not studied Degas, and if I had not researched and experimented with my medium.
 
If you want to learn how to execute a good work of art, make art, all the time.  If you want to become inspired and knowledgeable, read art history, research technique, and learn how to employ Photoshop.  I’m not kidding.  
 
Read David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters.  Employ all the modern tools available to you to create compositions, study value, color, etc.  Believe me, if Leonardo was alive today, he would be all over Photoshop, in fact, he would be writing code for Photoshop.  I’m not saying to work from a photo, I’m saying use Photoshop to learn how to see, to compose.  Use the filters to experiment.  I play with Photoshop all the time.  Then when all is said and done, I stand in front of the easel, lift my arm and there I go, the ‘old fashion’ way.  But what I’ve learned from tweaking with Photoshop is back there in the brain, and it helps.
 
Vermeer would never had been Vermeer if the that lens maker had not lived next door to him.  If you have not seen it, by all means, stop everything and rent or buy Tim’s Vermeer, a documentary on how Tim Jenison, who is living right now in San Antonio, shows us how he painted a “Vermeer.”  This isn’t about ‘pastel’, but it should give you an appreciation for the kind of tools artists have used to understand and portray light.  It should teach you to learn allthe tools available to you to experiment with composition, value, and color.
 
The best book on Pastel for technique I’ve ever used is The Pastel Book, Materials and Techniques for Today’s Artist, by Bill Creevy.  You can find it on Amazon.com.  Ellen Eagleis is a contemporary pastel portrait artist that works very small.  She doesn’t really ‘paint’ as most folks think of it, she draws.  She builds up her colors through cross hatching. It is a great way to learn how to make the most of pastel layers without having to go really large.  She demonstrates the lessons of Georges Seurat.  Her book is excellent.  Pastel Painting Atelier, Essential Lesson in Techniques, Practices, and Materials.  You can find it on Amazon.com.
 
I know I’m being long-winded here, but I want to mention plein air.  Yes, that is right, nothing teaches you like sitting outside and painting what is right there in front of you.  You are working fast.  Working outside makes you make decisions fast, you get going, you are working basically against time.  You see shadows in a different way.  It is wonderful.
But if you are like me, with three joint replacements, and it is 103 degrees outside, you may not be inspired to drench yourself in bug spray and go out there to paint (and sweat.) If you can’t get outside, set up a still life using natural light near a window in your house.  Get a cup of coffee and sit down.  Look, and go.  It will also teach you a lot.  Work from life.
 
And finally, let me circle back to being a part of PSST.  Who influences me?  I was transfixed by Linda Dellandre’s paintings.  I check her web site all the time.  I took one mini-workshop with her.  I’ll never forget I was going to carefully draw in each leaf or stem of this cactus and she came by and made a big swooping mark.  It shook me up, but I got it.  About a hundred years ago I was in Fredericksburg and I found this pastel I just loved for $200.  My husband bought it for my birthday, it was by Jeri Salter.  I want to tell you, I’ve studied how she did those telephone poles and atmosphere for years.
 
Finding PSST has been wonderful for me, the painters there are inspiring.

PSST:  In the past, you have encouraged many of us, and we are wondering if giving art demonstrations or teaching workshops is one of your interests. Please tell us what classes, exhibitions or other art events you have coming up.

Nancy Lilly: 

A Planned Demo
 
I have a demonstration scheduled at the Austin Pastel Society for January 27th.  This is my ‘first rodeo’ doing a demo.  I’m going to demonstrate how I use a particular type of fixative in a very specific way to achieve a textured effect.  I’m going to talk about mixing up pastel grounds and how to apply them.
 
While I will not present my demo with a PowerPoint, I’ve documented my notes, recipes, tips, and resources in a presentation format.  I’ve always found it hard to take comprehensive notes, and by doing this, I can send anyone who wants it, a pdf of everything I’ve covered.  I want the audience to concentrate on the demo, and not worry about taking notes.  If anyone at PSST is interested, they can email me and I’m happy to send them my demo notes.
 
My Shows and Events
 
I had a work accepted for the IAPS online show last October, 2018, and I just sent in another submission for the 2019 IAPS exhibit yesterday.  I’ll know about that come February 15th.   I was selected as one of the artists included in the Pastel 100 competition put on by the Pastel Journal.  The article will come out in April 2019.  I was awarded Best of Show, and second place for Pastel at the Coppini Academy of Fine Arts in San Antonio last October.  Their show was celebrating the 300th anniversary of San Antonio.  And finally, I am having a one-person show, my first, at the Williamson County Public Library next July, here in Round Rock, Texas. ​