2024 Senior Exhibition Artists

Lily McGuirk

Concentration: Art + Design: Painting and Sculpture

About Lily McGuirk

Lily McGuirk is a Painting Major and Sculpture Minor pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, looking forward to graduating in Spring 2024. She has always had a deep passion for art making, pursuing painting, drawing, and sculpture throughout high school and college. Her Senior Exhibition combines her love for art and her identity as a queer woman, celebrating the unique and tender connections formed with the women in her life.

Statement

My work consists of mixed media oil paintings and sculpture inspired by my life growing up as a woman. Not only is my own identity very important to me, but the other women and femme people in my life have had the biggest impact on me out of anyone else. Experiences like doing makeup and hair with friends, celebrating birthdays, or walking home together after a night out are a few that I reflect on. I strive to create work that is special and meaningful to me, and other women and femme people can also identify with and find comfort in.

As I convey these tender moments, I gravitate towards soft colors, materials, and techniques to effectively communicate the feeling that I want to create. I use an emotive palette of pastel and bright pinks, reds, blues, and greens, as well as delicate painting and sculpture techniques to create a sentimental undertone. Color and material become a vehicle to adorn the subjects and unify my 2D and 3D work. The added material such as textiles, beading, glitter, and yarn are instrumental in communicating my theme to the viewer as these items relate to girlhood as I know it.