Lot 29 - Lily Buchanan - Sapling in a Yellow Dream

Three colour woodcut print on paper
2025
A6 (10x15cm)
Original Artwork
Signed on Verso
Curated by Mercedes Lucy

About
My works lie in a dream world made up of sources from my memories, my everyday environment and my emotions. Desire is a key theme in my work and I use painting to explore surreal situations that we might find ourselves in when seeking out our desires. These situations are tender, brutal, humorous and melancholic. It is this balance of dichotomies that make up who we are. Happiness seems to go hand in hand with a shadow of destruction. The objects in my work are charged with an active symbolist quality that comes from the memories they hold and their own potential consciousness. The figures in my paintings reflect on the chaotic shifting of emotional states as we move through life. The characters are sweetly naïve and desperately curious. The characters in my work that inhabit everyday objects are attempting to relive memories that these objects trigger; in this case the horse chestnut tree near where I grew up.

Education
2020-2022
MFA in Fine Art, City and Guilds Art School of London

2011-2012
Diploma in Drawing, The Royal Drawing School London

2007-2011
BA Illustration at Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design

Solo Exhibitions
2023
Things Behind the Sun, Ramsay and Williams Gallery, Margate, UK

2022
Strawberry Chapstick Wood and other stories, City and Guilds of London Art School Degree Show, London, UK

2017
Sombrero Fallout paintings, Shapero Modern, Soho, London

Group Exhibitions
2023
Corpus, Hypha Studios, Farringdon
7 Artists at 7 Stratton Street

Awards
2022
Roger De Grey Drawing Prize

2012
The Royal Drawing School's Patrons Prize

Public Collections
The Royal Collection (United Kingdom)

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork
These four woodcuts tell the story of Tree Girl mid-metamorphosis. The symbol of the Tree Girl is part self-portrait and came about through a longing I had to step inside a childhood memory of climbing a tree where I grew up. Through drawing myself as inside the tree I felt I had transported myself into that childhood memory. Tree Girl’s face in these woodcuts is inspired by my eleven-month-old daughter and due to her and their tiny size I see them as my saplings; representing new growth and new beginnings.