Name/Title
Oakwood Atherton - Sr. Lilian Conaghan - Sing of Spring - 2019Description
Sister Lillian Conaghan
“Sign of Spring”
Oakwood Atherton
For Sister Lillian, who had never done art as an adult before her AWE experience, making art has become a way of expressing her love of nature. "It's a matter of color," she says. "That's my gift."
The oldest of five children, she was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1923. She laughs thinking of her only attempt at doing art in her youth---at the insistence of her mother—when she added a bonnet and a long skirt to an image of an antebellum girl.
Sister Lillian graduated from Maryville College and entered the convent in St. Louis at the age of 23. Years later, she fell in love with California when she went to the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. Much of her career was spent teaching chemistry to high school students.
She fondly recalls an important life lesson she learned on a European trip while eating breakfast on blue and white china at the home of an Austrian woman—one doesn't necessarily need to know a foreign language to communicate with foreigners.
Sr. Lillian describes herself as someone who likes to laugh and have fun with her friends. "I give joy to others," she says. At 97, she advises: "Continue to love others, which gives them life."
ART WITH ELDERS
2019 27th Annual Art With Elders Exhibit
