Lily Madden is a multidisciplinary painter engaging in several forms of investigation, social engagement, and redefinition. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in painting in 2024. Raised in the state of Kansas, her practice is heavily influenced by her tight knit community and the cultural identities that surround her. By examining the complexities of her interpersonal relationships, her works become inseparable from her own identity.  Lily’s paintings pull from introspection and empathy, using scale to explore intimacy and acknowledgments between the subject and viewer. "Ezra" is one of eight pieces in her recent body of work titled "Coffins for Cicadas." The large-scale paintings in this exhibition document the people around her, their ephemera and their spaces. She has created an intimate body of work that radiates a languorous yet alert stillness, forging a profound and somehow familiar connection between viewer and subject.