ARTIST STATEMENT
​
I never grew out of reading children’s books. I never grew out of building fairy gardens in between the roots of tall oak trees or searching for mermaid scales on the beach, early in the morning when the tide is low.
I never grew out of writing rhymes and poems or sitting alone, singing songs to myself under big palm trees or learning new jump rope tricks. I never grew out of hosting magical tea parties for my sisters or adding glitter glue to all my paintings.
I haven’t yet grown out of being afraid of the dark.
Somewhere in my teenage years I tried to grow out of my innocence. I tried to grow out of my silliness and childlike spirit. I thought it was lame and embarrassing to be me, so I tried to be cooler and rebellious for everyone else’s sake.
A very grown up grown up once said to me “Lily, you seem to think that life is a fairytale, but it’s not.”
They were much older and wiser than me, so I tried to understand what they meant…
But I never thought that life was a fairytale. I do think, however, that if you don’t at least poke around a few bushes looking for fairies you are, at the very least, missing out.
I’ve always found life mysterious. Maybe that’s why I don’t like to sleep in the dark.
My work is prayerful and playful. It is childlike and deep. It is the laughter that I find healing when my heart aches the most. And the light I want to bottle when life gifts me particularly beautiful moments.
ARTIST BIO
​
​Lily Coyl is a visual artist, singer, songwriter, curator, poet, and intuitive art and yoga instructor.
When working for museum curator, Dr. Alaka Wali, in 2019 at the Field Museum in Chicago, Lily learned something about art that would forever change the way that she created.
While interning on the curatorial team for the Exhibition: “Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories,” Lily learned that in the over 300 Native American languages, there is no word for art, equivalent to how art is defined in the west.
“Art,” in these languages, is inseparable from life, from spirit, from ritual, from co-creation with the divine. Inseparable from the channeling of the infinite into the physical.
That has forever informed the way that Lily creates.
She now creates art as ceremony, art as healing, art as ritual, art as magic, and art as prayer.
Lily passionately studied Studio Art and Political Science at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois. She has always found herself participating in the arts at the intersection of community building and the call for social change.
After graduating college, Lily studied the Healing Arts at Dragonfly Ranch Healing Art Center on the Big Island of Hawaii. There she reconnected with magic in the craters of volcanoes, through the essences of flowers, and the spirit of the waves of life.
​
She earned her yoga instructors certification in 2022 and in 2023 she began working in Reno Nevada as a local gallery curator, children’s art teacher, and yoga instructor.
Most recently, after her Grandpa passed away in 2024, she was led by him on a journey through Asia. From Singapore, to Bali Indonesia, to Itoshima, Fukuoka Japan.
Along the way she taught English to the kindest children she could have ever had the honor of meeting, screamed and laughed any remaining darkness into the healing waterfalls of Bali, and finally ended the year working on her first artist residency and artist exhibition in Japan. Her exhibition titled, “Turn, and Become Like Children.”
​
​
​
​
​
She now takes on the world of immersive art. She is currently recording an album of songs and poetry at Sound Bridge Studio, near Salt Lake City Utah. Working to sew together all the chapters of her journey thus far and bring the story, “Anthology of a Fairy, Lessons from Angels,” to you.
​​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​​
​​
​​​​
​​
