"IN ART AS WITH FAITH AND AS WITH LOVE, ONE MUST LET GO BEFORE THE REAL MAGIC TAKES PLACE. ALTHOUGH INTELLIGENCE AND LEARNING CAN BRING US TO THE BEGINNING OF UNDERSTANDING, WE SELDOM CAN GROW MUCH BEYOND THAT PLACE WITHOUT A VISION OF WHICH WE ARE ONLY A SMALL PART. "
Her published writings include From Painting to Painting as Sculpture: The Journey of Lilian Thomas Burwell (1997) and A Dichotomy of Passion: The Two Masters (2008). Burwell's works are in the collections of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland; Hampton University Museum; John and Susan Horseman Collection, among many others.
In December 2022, Lilian Thomas Burwell was featured in the New York Times as the "Tom Brady of Artists" for being an artist active and working at the age of 95. In April 2022, Burwell received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Howard University, Washington, D.C. She was honored alongside Betye Saar and Dr. Alvia Wardlaw. Her work was included in Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, an intergenerational exhibition highlighting 21 Black female abstract practitioners that traveled from Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City to The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida in 2017 and 2018.