Lily Formato
In December of 2025, I was invited to show my work this summer at Bloomfield Richwood Art Gallery in Richwood, WV, opening June 11th. Cecil asked if I could make enough new work by then. I committed. Determined to produce a body of work that is separate, new, and true.
The one thing I can say with full integrity is that I am not shy in person. I have perfected the art of smiling and making a friend wherever I go. I have to thank four years of nightly stand-up and improv jams in Chicago for that. The core tenants of improv are, listening and yes-and-ing. This trained me to observe my world more closely than I ever had before. Reading a room takes listening, mimicking, nodding, and drawing it.
In tandem with my nightly shifts at the theatres, I attended the Art Institute of Chicago, actively learning how to see. I kept listening and mimicking and nodding and saying yes, and. During that process I couldn't see my own progress except in glimmers: a new kiln fire in the ceramic studio, a figure study that had finally produced a likeness. I never fully understood my art during school, but I wrote everything down. I'm so grateful for that, because I understand now what my professors were getting across.
Graduating broke the spell.
Bemused is about seeing and translating my world. Since leaving the Art Institute, I needed to keep my own discipline, and the way I've done that is through vigorous drawing and sketching. In the past year since graduating, I've gone through hundreds of pages: observing the world around me, activated drawing, collages, and personal journaling.
There was always a snobbish attitude toward artists who worked exclusively from photographs. I didn't love that approach, but I understood why. The phone camera distorts the actual environment it's trying to capture. The human eye is the master of depth. I took that to heart. I couldn't grasp individual color and shape from a photograph, especially on a phone or iPad. But it's hard to go out and find exactly the imagery you're looking for.
My advanced painting professor, Peter Fegundo, once commented that my sketchbook drawings were more interesting than my paintings. Slight burn but I agreed. So what does that mean? I took a research approach, to my sketchbook and to my life. I went through my extensive collection of art and photography books: People Come First and Hot off the Griddle by Alice Neel, Plants of the Appalachian Mountains, Goya and Matisse books gone fragile from years of use in my late grandmother's collection. Family photographs. Scenes from favorite films and TV shows. My photos app is my best inspiration. I draw what I'm interested in, and sometimes what I'm not. I bring my sketchbook everywhere. No matter what.
The burst came when I made a huge batch of fresh canvases and gave myself permission to play. I use thin, sharp watercolor brushes. I opened my noir, walnut, and cobalt blue inks and began transcribing imagery from my sketchbook onto pink-gessoed canvases. The ink moved like a ballpoint pen. The same frantic scribble from the page, now on canvas. Oil paint feels too important, fragile and permanent. The ink washes away with water, enriching the pink gesso, the walnut bleeding through.
The drawings breathe a different air on canvas. They start to mean something. I flip through pages and connect one drawing to another, this to that, that to this. Automatic drawings fill many pages in my sketchbook. They keep my hands busy when I don't have the mental energy to summon a bird, a plant, a figure. I draw lines and dots and squares and connect them. No thought required, except the urgent one. The decisions are easy and fixable.
Through the second, third, fourth act of drawing the same image, confidence builds. Each iteration earns more risk.
My tortoiseshell cat, Maize, makes several appearances in this work. She lounges around my studio, inviting herself to be drawn, taking my place as subject, viewer, and narrator. Other times she hides in the darkness, observing. Her brown, black, and orange fur camouflages her into shadow in real life, but she will sunbathe on her window bed, fur illuminated, bright oranges and yellows reflecting off her body. A cat chameleon.
I'm not exactly a chameleon. I make myself known wherever I go. But I absorb a lot. People tell me things. Maybe it's my voice. Maybe my eyes. Either way, I can feel like a fly on the wall, watching the dynamics play out around me without disturbing them but be a part of the action.
I know I'm ready to paint when I start wanting the oil color. I begin slowly, loosening the painting with Gamsol and stand oil, letting the canvas soak it up. Washes first, to distinguish shadows, to find the forms. I work on multiple paintings at once. I have a tendency to overwork, so this practice forces me to slow down, to let things rest, to see how the paintings speak to each other. They aren't and are chronological. They're zaps and memories from me.
I feel confident in most of what I am saying but there are lingering questions that I haven't been able to answer for myself. Why are these images connected to each other? Why the specific religious/pop culture iconography? The thing is - this all feels right at the moment and I'm rolling with it.