The great Stephen Hawking once said, “Quiet people have the loudest minds.” Aspiring self taught artist, sophomore Lillian Jones, greatly lives up to this idea. Lilly may not always be the loudest one in a crowd, but when you set her in front of a blank canvas, you’ll see just how much she has to say.

Lilly has always been creating art. “I’ve been doing art for as long as I can remember.” It was not until around fifth or sixth grade that Lilly realized she had a talent for art and began creating pieces as a more frequent hobby. Lilly said, “It’s just something I enjoy. It’s relaxing. It’s a good outlet for how I’m feeling.”

At about the same time, Lilly was introduced to the Westmoreland Arts and Heritage Art Competition through her art classes at Latrobe Elementary School. From that point on, Lilly has entered and received multiple enroll mentions in the competition.

Lilly’s preferred form of art is mainly painted portraits, but she occasional works with other techniques. Each portrait Lilly paints is a unique creation with so much depth. Her bone structure is bold and the features add a story to the portraits.  

When creating her pieces she tends to use either watercolors or acrylics as her choice of mediums. In addition, when choosing hues for her art, Lilly is drawn towards bright colors and sometimes uses multiple shades of one color for a single piece.  While portraits are Lilly’s favorite type of art, she also attested to the fact that what she creates is linked to how she is feeling at the time or if she is inspired by something such as a color scheme. “I want to see how I can incorporate it into a painting,” said Lilly.

It would be expected that with so much depth to her pieces, Lilly would have a favored artist that she looks toward for motivation or guidance, but Lilly claims not to have one. “I don’t like to look at a lot of other art,” said Lilly. “I feel like the more art that I look at, I’ll subconsciously be copying them.”

Lilly may not find inspiration through other artist, but she has been an inspiration to her friends. “Lilly is a very skilled artist,” said Keely Thomas, sophomore and close friend of Lily, “I think that her talent deserves to be recognized.”

Lilly enjoys sharing her artwork with her friends and the world through her Instagram account dedicated to her finished creations. Lilly created her art Instagram account, @lillianjonesart, because she said, “Social media is a good way for me to get my art out there.” Even though no one, such as art schools, have reached out to her yet through social media, Lilly attributes it to her account still being small. It is easy to see she has much talent and it will not be long before someone realizes that.

While Lilly is clearly a talented artist, she is still uncertain if she would pursue it as a career. She claims that if she were to enter into the art field she would most likely put her skills to use in an area such as animation or film making by expanding her choice of medium from just painting.

While Lilly is a woman of few words, her paintings say all the things she does not. With each stroke Lilly adds to her paintings, she adds a new piece to her story.