Lillian MacKinney

Lillian MacKinney has built her love for artwork alongside her love for her subjects — people, animals, and the often overlooked moments of life. She studied Studio Art at Wake Forest University, splitting her time between drawing, painting, and printmaking and chasing whatever medium best captured what she was after that week.

She grew up in rural Colorado in a house that always seemed to have one more animal than made sense, which is probably where her patience for watching things closely got its start. By the time she got to the International Baccalaureate's Higher Level Studio Art coursework, that habit of looking had already turned into a way of working.

These days she works mostly in charcoal, Indian ink, and oil, usually circling the same subject for a while before moving on. What she's really after is that moment when something ordinary starts to feel unfamiliar — when the light hits an object just wrong enough that you have to look twice, or when you feel the weight of a figure more than you actually see it.

Her work has shown up in Kaleidoscope, a national art journal, and she picked up a Scholastic Silver Key Award along the way for her drawing. One piece from a recent series also made it into the Saiga Conservation Alliance's online gallery.

She lives and works in Milwaukee, WI these days. When she's not in the studio, she's probably out hiking or fostering some animal that needed a place to land.