Artist Talk with Lillian Bayley Hoover
Welcome our latest exhibition, A Breath, A Pause, An Eternity, a Collapse featuring the oil paintings of Lillian Bayley Hooverin the Workshop Gallery from 4-7 pm on Friday, March 21st.
Meet the artist and be the first to see this new exhibition and enjoy some light snacks on us!
Located in The Workshop Gallery, Building 3 at Ball & Socket Arts
Artist Talk on Saturday, March 22nd at 11AM.
Regular Gallery Hours from 12-4 pm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Artist Statement:
My creative practice begins with encounters in the landscape, often bearing witness to human interventions there. Themes include human claims over the land, as well as the relationship between the built environment and what is considered by many to be “wild.” This work reflects an active landscape: a living participant in the events of our time, as well as a record of time itself. These paintings often look like photo collages, as competing visual languages and surfaces evoke the interruptions or barriers that mediate our connection with nature. On occasion, portions of the picture plane appear to be torn away or excised, drawn elements are partially obscured behind layers of clear gesso, or the surface is built up to create a subtle bas-relief before paint is applied. The result suggests an unstable world in which an alternate scene may be concealed behind the painted image.
These paintings probe the impact of human activity on "nature," what the record etched onto our planet's surface reveals, the ongoing processes by which planetary and biological systems shape one another, and how humanity's brief presence will reverberate into the future. My goal is to create accessible visual narratives that locate our moment within the broader context of “deep time,” encouraging viewers to consider our place in these larger systems and whether our estrangement from the natural world might arise from not considering ourselves within this framework.
This somewhat melancholy work serves as witness to a fraught moment in time. Part meditation, part metaphor, part elegy, these paintings channel the joy and despair which characterize our species’ precarity. In the face of humanity’s uncertain future, I hope this work will foster connection and fellowship for those who cherish our living earth.
About the Artist:
Lillian Bayley Hoover's work is in public collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC), and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Grant, the Bethesda Urban Partnership's Trawick Award, multiple grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, a travel grant from Philadelphia’s Center for Emerging Visual Artists, and fellowships to attend residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has been featured on the cover of New American Paintings. She has had solo exhibitions at MoCA Arlington (Arlington, VA), Goya Contemporary (Baltimore, MD), BlackRock Center for the Arts (Germantown, MD), and VisArts (Rockville, MD), among other venues. Hoover holds an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA from University of North Carolina Asheville. She teaches at Towson University.
https://lillianhoover.com/home.html
Image features: A Planet Swayed by Breath, by Lilliian Bayley Hoover, completed in 2024, dimensions 36x48 inches