Visual artist Anne Lilly has been based in Boston, Massachusetts for over thirty years, but she was born in Oklahoma and grew up in five states across the American West. That region's rich diversity of wilderness was long ago tamed by a ubiquitous application of the cardinal grid — an early imprinting that conceptually informs Lilly's work in a broad range of media: abstract kinetic sculpture (from studio pieces to public art); two dimensional work in watercolor, acrylic, oil & monotype; and most recently, figurative clay. Throughout, she brings precise rationalist constructs — geometry, grids, and gradients — into direct conflict with randomness, distortion, and emotional sensation.

Lilly's work has earned numerous awards, including the grant-award for lifetime achievement from the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation in 2013, a fellowship in sculpture/installation from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2019, and the Blanche E Colman award in 2011. In 2023 she was included in "After The Wild" at the Jewish Museum, NY. Her work is held in the collections of the Jewish Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Middlebury College Museum of Art, and the DeCordova Museum, as well as in corporate and private collections internationally.

Lilly studied engineering foundations at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Tech, and an MFA from Clark University. She has taught at Boston College, Suffolk University, RISD, MIT, Art Institute of Boston, Lesley University, and MassArt.