About Lucy
My mother (Ann Parker) was an artist and took a dim view of art colleges, so she pushed me into doing science even though I had shown some artistic talent at an early age. I ended up at Sussex University and getting a degree in Biology.
You can't keep a good artist down so after that I went to art college and ended up studying for a BA in Illustration.
After this I was involved with setting up a games software company called Salamander Software in the gaming boom of the early 80s. I was chiefly illustrator and package designer and it was a challange designing dynamic covers for Pacman and Space Invaders.
At Art College I developed my passion for life drawing. I think of it as my artistic aerobics and have always done it on a regular basis. After a short break to have children I began to paint for myself and started to exhibit my work. I began to teach painting and drawing as well at this time and still do.
I discovered handmade Khadi watercolour paper and a new way of using watercolour at a workshop with the painter Graham Dean. This changed my life. It seemed natural to use my life drawings in my work once I moved away from my tight illustrative style. I use a very limited palette of colours, which seem sympathetic to the human form.
Portraits, landscapes and architecture are also inspiring to me and my paintings tend to reflect where I have been recently. Obviously, I have done Brighton a lot, but I am very lucky to go to Cape Cod every year to stay with the in-laws. The Cape is more or less a source of constant inspiration to me. We live in a shed in the woods by the sea and the quality of light there is fantastic, and I try to capture it in my paintings. Some of my paintings reflect Edward Hooper and it is not because I am trying to do that - it really does look like that.
Venice is also a recurring theme. It is hard for an artist to visit Venice and not want to paint it. The light, the colours, the architecture and the atmosphere are hard to resist.
I am a member of the Fiveways Artists Group in Brighton who open their houses during the Brighton Festival in May every year for art exhibitions. It was the Fiveways group that started the open house phenomenon, which has now spread throughout the town and country. We have a couple of thousand visitors every year. It is a great way to exhibit as you are in sole charge of your exhibition and you get to talk to the visitors directly and get their reactions to your work. This is my main exhibition every year.
I did have an exhibition in 2002 at the Hawth Theatre in Crawley where my nudes caused a sensation, so much so that some were taken down as they were deemed to cause offence. I was rather taken a back by this as no one had batted an eyelid in Brighton. However this was a great excuse for free publicity.
I regularly undertake commissions. I used to get a lot to do peoples houses and pets, now it seems to be nude portraits.