The Lilies How They Grow

Emily McIlroy uses the practice of drawing and painting as a means of connecting the beauty, violence, power, and fragility found in nature with internal landscapes of thoughts, memories, and emotions. Her large-scale works on paper explore forces and elements of the natural world as metaphors for human experiences of love, loss, grief, and transformation. Densely layered and detailed, the nine panels that make up the series The Lilies How They Grow are composed of organic shapes, colors, and textures reminiscent of underwater caverns, glaciers, or the delicate features of animals and plants.

Since the sudden deaths of her twin brother and mother, the artist’s paintings have represented “wildernesses”—spaces that harbor great dangers, as well as potential for incredible wonder and discovery. McIlroy created these works as prayers for safe passage through the darkness, one that leads to a life filled with love, light, and joy.

The title of the series comes from a dream McIlroy had a month after the death of her twin. As she was walking along the edge of a cliff at night she slipped, and while falling, saw two small lilies that she grabbed onto and used to pull herself up and out of the blackness. “Now, whenever traction becomes weak, when I don’t remember who I am, I consider the lilies. I search for the handholds in the dark. I take the seeds of those life-sustaining flowers and try to grow them, not in little pairs, but in full, feracious fields.”

-Katherine Love (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Honolulu Museum of Art)

For more images and writing on the creation of The Lilies How They Grow, please visit here.