Lucy Farley
Lucy Farley (1982-) lives and works in London. She studied at Central St. Martins graduating in 2005, and has an MA in printmaking from the Royal College of Art (2009), she recently completed a two-year Fellowship at the Royal Academy. Exhibitions in London have included the ‘Originals’ Printmaking show at the Mall Galleries in London, as well as The Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
“Painting, drawing and printmaking are all part of my practice. I am interested in depicting places that I have a personal connection with or a history that inspires me. My work aims to build up a record of time, spirit of place and changing feelings which occur through travel, my existence in the city and a connection with nature and the landscape. ‘The fragments of memory, past sensations and experiences, that are associated with a particular urban or natural landscape, form the basis of my work.
I am interested in the pictorial deconstruction and rearrangement of landscape, the figure and still life. Seen and felt experiences, combined with repeated drawing and documentation, allow me to present the subject within a new context and explore the spirit of place, objects and the human condition in relation to this.Through this reorganisation on paper and canvas, we as viewers experience a shift in perceived realities and question our mental and physical state within our immediate surroundings.
I am drawn to the tension and play between real and illusory space and spending time in a given place allows imagery to sift into a reference library of remembered forms, which is almost subconscious in it’s operations when I work on prints , paintings and ceramics back in the studio.It is important I work in situ on Printmaking plates, paper and drafting film, directly from the landscape , figure or interior. There is a speed and spontaneity I wish to capture in my original drawings which I can manipulate, but always keep in the finished works.
Drawing is at the heart of everything I make. This in turn leads to working in an array of different mediums, which is key for me to progress and evolve. It allows a new abstract language to form, which then questions the construction of the next piece of work; ceramic reliefs as 3d objects for painting, distort initial representations of a subject, which in turn introduce a new approach to printmaking plates that feed back into the painting. It is a continuous experimental circle of thinking through making. I like to think of these various print, ceramic or drawing constructions as a ‘stage’, a defined area within which static, spatial relationships are set up.
I have always been more interested in the drawings of sculptors and the conversion of a three dimensional image to a flat plane, and the struggle to convey the full experience of a multi dimensional world. For this reason, I have always been greatly influenced by the American Abstract Expressionists and the physicality with which they approached their work and their ‘physical embodiment’ in the paintings themselves. Scandinavian painters such as Munch, Asger Jorn And Per Kirkeby have inspired my obsession with the particular atmosphere and mystical feel associated with Nordic painting. Growing up with a Danish Mother, I have strong connections with Denmark and regularly return home to study art collections and shows.There is a romanticism, and love of landscape associated with Danish painters of the fifties that links to the English neo romantics in post-war Britain, such as Keith Vaughan, who has been a huge influence on my practice.The melancholy and nostalgia of this particular period in British painting has always evoked a strong emotional response and and played an important role in my own work.’
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