Tilly Woodward

Tilly Woodward 's oil paintings are often mistaken for photographs because of their unbelievable detail. Tilly creates intimate glimpses at objects both man-made and from the natural world, sometimes a pairing of the two, in her oil on board paintings. Tilly writes, "The farm I grew up on has been in our family since 1849. My early relationship with the world was largely solitary and largely visual. I spent a lot of time looking at the things around me--soil, sky, animals and plants in all stages of life and decay...My days are busier than when I was a child, but I still spend as much time as I can just looking closely at things. There is so much that is uncertain in the world. I find it a comfort to take time to see one thing clearly, or a part of one thing clearly, each day. I think of what I do as witnessing...I paint what I see. It feels right to look closely and celebrate objects through observation, meditation and documentation, giving voice to their inherent meaning and beauty...The things I paint are symbolic of my life, people past and living: family, loved ones, our history together, people I would like to honor. An awe of the forces of nature. I love oil paint-- the way it smells, the way it moves, the way it captures color and light. I work on paper mounted to panel, because I like quality of the surface and the ease of moving from drawing to paintings. I love the idea of painting as the accumulation of small actions."  Tilly is Curator of Academic and Community Outreach at Grinnell College Museum of Art. Her works have been exhibited in many museums and galleries nationally and can be found in museum, corporate and private collections in Israel, Ghana, Uganda, India, and throughout the United States. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including two Fellowships for Drawing from the National Endowment for the Arts. She graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the University of Kansas.