Exhale

Lucy was born and educated in the UK and travelled extensively before settling in New Zealand 15 years ago. Her art education began in the UK and continues in NZ with foundation courses at Whitcliffe, plus completing a 2 year intensive painting programme with Matthew Browne and Kathryn Stevens. Lucy is a painter, working primarily in oils. Her work explores the realm we occupy inside ourselves, our dreams, our surroundings, and those we share them with. Especially interested in people's inner stories, and the perceptions and psychological constructs they manufacture for themselves, she often uses animals (living and dead) to represent ideas and feelings, and also add individuals' narratives to the works. She is influenced by renaissance and classical painters, enjoying beauty and the ways in which even lavish or kitsch themes can commingle with darker ideas to produce something which is both beautiful and meaningful. She enjoys this creation of beauty as a deliberate opposition to the current aesthetic 'sterility' in much of today's contemporary art. She also undertakes portraiture work and is happy to work on commission. Her last portrait (The Cusp) was a finalist in the Adam Portrait Awards and displayed in the New Zealand National Portrait Gallery.