Sam Gilliam

Lilly

Sam Gilliam’s 2022 work, Lilly, is energized, colorful, and extraordinarily tactile. The work may appear flat from the front, but its beveled frame (a sloping, angled cut) gives the painting a depth of six inches. This allows the work to emerge from the wall toward the viewer. After spending much of his career staining and draping unstretched canvases, Gilliam returned to his 1960s and ‘70s practice of using beveled-edge stretchers. With Lilly, he introduced a variety of materials, including sawdust and wax, to create a textured canvas. Made in the final year of the artist’s life, Lilly combines the improvisational spirit of Gilliam’s early work with the experimental approach to materiality that he cultivated throughout his career.