Lisa Milroy was the third artist to decorate the Tate tree. She chose to paint groups of traditional Christmas decorations, using standard festive colours. Milroy is best known for her paintings of ordered sequences of everyday objects, which she depicts again and again, against a neutral ground, until through repetition she feels she really knows them.

Milroy has always accorded mundane objects and implements the closest attention to detail and was impressed, on a recent visit to Japan, by a similar response there to ordinary things. She also noted the closeness in Japanese calligraphy of the characters to the objects and meanings they represent. Her decorations reflect these perceptions and mark a return to the individual object seen as a still life.

The commission was supported by the Patrons of New Art.

Biography:

Lisa Milroy was born in Vancouver in 1959. She studied at St. Martins School of Art 1977-79 and Goldsmiths' College 1979-82.