Ghost Stories, Medieval Books, and Flower Gardens Are All Inspiration for Artist Lily Stockman

Vogue

2 days ago

Somewhere inside Manhattan's Morgan Library & Museum is an illuminated manuscript from the 15th century called The Black Hours. It is one of many such books that were prevalent in Christian households in the Middle Ages, noting which prayers to recite throughout the day. But what makes The Black Hours so special—its vellum pages darkened with carbon, giving the silver and gold text and the ornately drawn religious scenes a striking luster—is also what makes it so fragile.
'It's like a ghost story,' says the artist Lily Stockman, whose abstract paintings give off their own kind of glow. She's never seen The Black Hours in person (few have—it was last on view in 1997), but years ago she heard the tale of this 500-year-old book tucked inside an acid-free box. 'Maybe there's something that's kind of romantic about that too,' she says.
Stockman, ever the polymath, began researching other medieval books of hours from her sunny studio in Glassell Park, the neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles where she also lives with her husband and three children, ages seven, five, and three. She noticed a shared architecture between these books and her paintings.
'I love the compositional setup of the page, with the voluptuous, decorative border, and a scene painted inside,' Stockman, 43, says. 'My paintings are the same thing: The border is the container for the floating, living thing inside.' She was also struck by the way these books offered little moments of dedicated reflection throughout each day.
Stockman's Summer Thunderheads, 2025. Ed Mumford. Courtesy of Charles Moffett.
This inquiry served as the jumping-off point for Stockman's latest series of paintings, titled 'Book of Hours,' which in September will go on view at Charles Moffett gallery's new space in Tribeca. The dozen oil paintings in this show share many characteristics with her earlier works. She's still using brightly colored perimeters to frame her pared-back, almost geometric shapes, which nod to the natural world—abstracted versions of seeds, dahlias, and meadows. These shapes have been with her from a young age, growing up on a hay farm in rural New Jersey, the oldest of four girls, where she inherited a love of gardening from her mother. Her new show will have plenty of similar references: riffs on rhubarb, a rippling pond, and coastal Maine.
But she has also set a new challenge for herself: to keep the traces of her process visible. 'I want the labor and the decision-making and the mistakes to be legible,' she says. Less pristine, more like life. In one of the largest of the new paintings, the seven-foot-tall Ipswich, a border of pulsating red, pink, and white contains visible brushstrokes. 'Maybe a couple of years ago I would have blended all of that,' she says.
Though Stockman's paintings have a geometric bent, they possess a certain handmade tenderness. It's a nuance best observed up close and in person, not just on a phone screen. 'Standing in front of these works, you can't help but see, similar to being in front of an Agnes Martin, that slight wobble of a line,' says Charlie Moffett, who selected Stockman for his first-ever show when he opened his gallery in 2018. Moffett has been an avid supporter and collector of Stockman's work since they met through mutual friends over a decade ago. 'I remember being on the phone with her when I was still working at Sotheby's, and I mentioned that I was kicking around this idea, and that I wasn't going to do it if she didn't agree to be the first show.'