Lillian Warren Wait With Me

Lillian Warren creates a specific painting installation to cover the walls of the Grace R. Cavnar Gallery with a continuous series of figures. Foreground figures are life-sized or larger and others diminish in scale and recede into empty space. Through the repetition of figures throughout the paintings, Warren implies reflections, the passage of time and a shifting point of view. Each figure seems to have been waiting for a long time, glancing up to see if something has happened, absorbed with some electronic gadget, staring into space, or even sleeping; oblivious to the others, although clearly inhabiting the same space and all waiting…for something. Warren explains, “This series is a continuation of my investigation of liminal spaces, in-between situations and conditions characterized by dislocation, uncertainty and the dissolution of hierarchies. When working on the paintings I find myself thinking of “Waiting for Godot” and how that absurdist play can feel uncomfortably familiar as we spend our lives waiting endlessly for something that we might not recognize when we see it.”