Lily Morris
Lily Morris was born on Martha's Vineyard in 1987. Her work draws on a figurative background, shifting in recent years into new materialist thought: she collects natural materials and embeds them directly into the surface of the paintings, treating each as a charged material with its own lived history.
Her ongoing series, Entanglement, is built like a knot: nothing exists in isolation, and everything is held by what surrounds it. Snakeskin, clay, hornet's nest paper, and shells are pulled into compositions that behave like bodies, carrying motherhood, labor, and mortality inside the same surface.
Morris holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2009) and an MFA from the University at Albany (2026). Her work has been shown at Eric Firestone Gallery and the MEAM Museum in Barcelona, and is currently exhibited at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, NY. She has held residencies at the Millay Colony in Austerlitz, NY, and Red Gate in Beijing, China, with a residency upcoming at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
My Portfolio
Bulwark
Bulwark, oil, mussel shells, sand and acrylic on canvas, 48x48”. This painting is based on a massive fresco painted at...
Process for Bulwark
This video shows the process I used to create the painting Bulwark.
Knot
Knot, 2026, hornet’s nest paper and acrylic on panel, 30x40”. In the fall I began discovering many abandoned hornet's nests and found...
Process video for Knot
She was the weather
She was the weather, 2026, 72x117” Acrylic and hornet's nest paper on linen. Six months of sleep. The queen hornet wakes alone each spring...
She Was the Weather
This carousel shows clips of my process creating "She Was the Weather"
Infinite Coil
Infinite Coil, 2025, acrylic on rope and linen, 30x31”. Infinite Coil is a painting inspired by a collage of receding ropes on a ship and...
Love before Language
Love before Language, 2026, acrylic on linen, 63x74” I grew up on the beach, under the clay cliffs of Aquinnah, on Martha's Vineyard. Red...
Point of Origin
Point of origin, 2026, 31x83” unique shape, fake hair, plaster gauze, flag pole. Point of Origin is a physical embodiment of a vanishing...
Cable
Cable, 2025, ripped pantyhose, cotton batting, 11 feet x 9 inches, unique shape. In this tree-sized textile column entitled Cable, my...