In her paintings and drawings, Lila Freeman examines our attachment to objects, environments, and others. Since moving to Brooklyn at eighteen to attend art school, she has built a network of chosen family and creative peers who feature in her work. In portraits of Freeman's community (and in drawings of nude models and fellow subway riders), she honors and dissects both the human form and psyche: distinct and shapeless, desired and rejected, aged and newborn. Through  her unflinching gaze, viewers are offered unexpected and at times voyeuristic insights into other people.

 

Freeman's urge to permanently record her aesthetic and emotional attraction to a human subject can also be felt in her urban landscape and still life paintings. Freeman keeps a wealth of personally meaningful objects for use in making still life arrangements, which she then draws and paints from direct observation. The resulting pictures are cryptic tableaux which can be read as portraits, too - of the artist's studio, her props, and her process in locating, selecting, and recording those sights. Through the use of urgent, gestural paint application and an emotive limited palette, Freeman further shows her deep connection to her chosen subject matter and media.

 

Freeman was born in Chicago and raised in Evanston, Illinois.  She earned her BFA from Pratt Institute, majoring in Drawing. She has been an artist-in-residence at The Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY) and The Ragdale Foundation (Lake Forest, IL), and has exhibited her work in numerous galleries and publications. ​

Freeman also holds a Master's degree in Library and Information Science (also from Pratt Institute), and works as a public librarian. She lives and makes art in Brooklyn, NY.​