Untitled, 2023

Born in Los Angeles, Lily Ramírez’s painting practice has always hinged on her fascination with the with paint. She began working in acrylics at a young age, experimenting alongside her father who supported her burgeoning practice. The pair moved across the US, living briefly in Montana and Wyoming before re-settling in LA. “Everything I’ve done is based on what he taught me. I had a beautiful, natural childhood,” she says. Ramirez attended Otis College of Art and Design to study painting as an undergraduate, where she studied under artists Meg Cranston, Scott Grieger, and Soo Kim. With her practice now fully evolved, Ramírez’s sumptuous paintings explore the physical limits of her chosen medium. Through richly textured surfaces and repetitive, methodical marks, the artist injects a playful vitality into her oil compositions, with paint strokes eking out the abstracted shapes of dangling tendrils in her backyard or the weaving lines of rivers, highways, and borders. The artist rarely mixes her pigments, instead relying on the panoply of monochromatic strokes to create meaning. Ramírez draws inspiration from her love of Los Angeles, her 3 year old son, and husband, all three of whom she loves – not in that order