Today we’d like to introduce you to Lillian Warren.
Lillian, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
When I moved to Houston 30 years ago, I was a painter of pleasant conventional landscapes. Houston flummoxed me. And fascinated me. I had no idea where to take my painting in this city of endless highways, anonymous strip malls, office buildings and gas stations. It took a while, but one day I realized it was those anonymous in-between places that I wanted to paint. And they have been a continuing thread in my work ever since.
In my current series of “Symbolic Landscapes” I paint the built landscape as a reflection of human values and activity. There can be an odd beauty in these lonely transitional spaces, but also the heavy footprint of a culture that has evolved into a throw-away society.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Being an artist is never smooth road! But it’s never boring. It’s a continual challenge to grow and change and create the best work you can. For those who paint as a hobby, (and there is nothing wrong with that!) it can be relaxing. But for those of us who create work as a vocation, an avocation, it’s one of the hardest and most rewarding things in the world.
And then, there’s the question of how do you pay the bills and still make time for art? There are many answers to that question, and there is no wrong answer as long as the path is a good fit for you. When I got my undergraduate degree in studio art, it hit me like a bolt of lightning, “how was I going to pay the rent?” (Looking back on my younger self I can’t believe I hadn’t thought about it before then.) I felt that the pressure of trying to make a living with art was probably going to suck all the joy right out of the process. So, I took a left turn and proceeded to develop a career in business: technology sales, project management, business planning, and eventually strategic planning and organizational change management. An unconventional path, but one that worked for me. I always made some time to paint, keeping the engine warm so to speak. In the early 2000s I was able to flip the script and mainly work part-time while being a full-time artist.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My focus is the transitional, in-between spaces of our urban / suburban landscape. For instance, where we leave our trash, or empty lots where nature is pushed to the edges. But in the past few years, my paintings have moved from a fairly realistic style exploring the theme of placelessness, to a more abstracted, symbolic landscape. The theme has expanded to include the built landscape as a reflection of our uneasy relationship with nature and our frequent isolation from each other.
Sometimes people are curious about my current palette. Why all this orange and yellow and pink? Firstly, this palette, along with the simplification of forms, removes the images from any hint of documenting a specific place, and intuitively moves them into the realm of the symbolic. Also, we tend to think of these as cheerful colors. My goal is to use color so it gains an edge while remaining a bit seductive. The paring of seductive and toxic perfectly reflects my response to the conflicting reality we live in. Our consumption based, convenience oriented, throw-away culture is wildly seductive. The fundamental assumption that enables that culture requires us to ignore our interconnection with nature and each other. That is toxic.
But I want to work to be open to personal interpretation. All the things I’m thinking about as I create the work to don’t have to be what everyone else takes from it. But I do hope others may look at the world a little differently after seeing my paintings. Perhaps enjoying the beauty of the side of an old beat-up dumpster, or the odd monumentality of an elevated highway backlit by the sun.
The most important lesson I’ve learned is: Keep creating. There will be times when you don’t want to. Doesn’t matter. Make time. Creativity is not only about inspiration, although that’s nice when it happens. It’s about persistence and building a creative practice.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was always wanting to “make something” – which usually meant drawing or painting. At age 5 I got first prize in the first art contest I ever entered. I was the only kid who entered in that age group, but that didn’t make any difference to me. I still have that small watercolor painting.
Although I was the youngest, I was the ring leader among my siblings. Making up games, leading treasure hunts, and occasionally getting us all into trouble with Mom and Dad. Perhaps it was a little of this hutzpah that enabled me to create a series of paintings that so often features trash cans and dumpsters!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lillian.warren1/
