Camden Art Centre is pleased to present this Limited Edition, produced on the occasion of Lily van der Stokker: Thank You Darling, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in London, held from 29 April to 18 September 2022. This exhibition brought together a selection of drawings and wall paintings made between 1989 and 2021, exemplifying van der Stokker’s commitment to a practice that champions tenderness, decoration, and the aesthetics of care.

Rendered in her signature pastel palette and flowing forms, this edition continues van der Stokker’s radical embrace of beauty and sentimentality—elements long dismissed in the modernist tradition as superficial or unserious. Her work challenges these assumptions by centering subject matter traditionally coded as feminine or domestic: daily routines, social niceties, illness, friendship, and family. In doing so, she reclaims the decorative as a meaningful, even political, artistic language.

Critically, this edition can be read as a rejoinder to the macho minimalism and conceptualism that dominated much of late 20th-century art discourse. Van der Stokker deliberately positions her practice outside those frameworks, instead aligning with an ethics of vulnerability and personal narrative. Through the use of hand-drawn texts, swirls, flowers, and color fields, she transforms private emotional states into bold visual declarations.

Importantly, the work also sits within a lineage of feminist art that includes artists such as Ree Morton and Judy Chicago—practices that foregrounded care, ornament, and emotional honesty. Van der Stokker’s edition for Camden Art Centre distills this ethos into a tactile, intimate format, inviting viewers to reflect on the politics of positivity and the quiet resistance embedded in joy.

Courtesy of Camden Art Centre