About
Lily Ray Ingram draws in charcoal and pastel on paper, making highly finished portraits and still lifes in a narrow range of greys, blacks and whites.
Her portraits pair carefully observed figures with something that doesn’t belong: a cartoon mask, a clown’s painted face, a costume horn, a clawed hand at the shoulder. Rendered with the same patience as the skin and fabric around them, these intrusions sit somewhere between play, disguise and unease.
Alongside the portraits, Ingram draws still lifes of small personal objects — a tarot card, a telephone receiver, a hairbrush, a well-worn copy of The Bell Jar — arranged like evidence and left for the viewer to read.
The Bell Jar, charcoal and pastel on paper