Lily Bogdanyi-Miller is a drawing artist and painter whose work engages with both current social-political issues and historical events, and the points where they overlap.

This fusion of the contemporary and historical depicts the unease and uncertainty of our current time and gives an opportunity to make connections with the past.

She engages with political and social issues by collecting a wide selection of newspapers, magazines articles and images as a means of building up an archive for visual and text-based inspiration that is then used for her drawings and paintings. This helps her stay engaged with the news and the development of critical national and global issues. She documents contemporary crises such as the current Russia invasion of Ukraine, on a day-by-day basis.

She sees her work as ‘Representational’ art because it shows real-world events in their often ugliest manifestations. By sticking to a limited colour palette of predominantly red and blue, she gives her work strong political association. Red symbolises both moderate and extreme left-wing thinking but also represents power and death. Blue is often linked with right-wing politics, but also with the contradictions of coldness and distance combined with peace and tranquility. These colours add a subliminal political message to her work alongside her use of black, the colour of darkness and despair.

Previously, much of Lily’s work has focussed on UK socio-political events. She has explored for example, the increasing wealth gap between rich and poor in her drawing and painting. However, now she is exploring war, in its ugliness and brutality, which has challenged her own perspective on life itself. This new perspective now lives through her art.

Email: lilybogdanyimiller@yahoo.co.uk

Instagram: @lilybodanyi_art

Images

People are buildings, buildings are people, April 2022, 59×84 cm, ink on paper.

Eve before destruction, April 2022, 42×59 cm, ink on paper.

History on repeat, April 2022, 59×84 cm, ink on paper.