BEHIND THE BRUSH
ARTIST PROFILE: LUCY DICKENS
Lucy Dickens, great, great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, began her career as a full-time artist in 1990.
Before the transition into a full-time artist, she worked as a successful fashion stylist for Condé Naste, then became a freelance illustrator, working for publications including The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, Vogue, Brides, Harpers and Queen and Tatler. She began to paint while writing and illustrating a series of children’s books, which were successfully published in London and New York.
Lucy Dickens calls herself a people watcher, a nosey parker with a vivid imagination. As a true Dickensian, she observes and records London life, with a gently satirical take on her subjects. She loves the glitter and the gold of grand hotels, especially the Ritz, Piccadilly, where the waiters, the porters and the barmen quietly attend to the orders of lipsticked blue-lidded ladies in body-con frocks, blow dries and high heels. Palace hotels and fancy restaurants are ‘wonderful stages’ she says, ‘full of pomp and circumstance, costumes, uniforms and old traditions enacted daily as the guests come and go.’
The Artist on their Art
Ms. Dickens on her painting style. “My technique as a painter involves layering and weaving many colours to bring life into my figures and spaces. I want to feel the air and see movement in my paintings and I avoid solid blocks of colour. I work in oils using rough canvasses, which helps to create the diffused, airy quality that I strive to achieve.” www.lucydickens.com
LUCY DICKENS WORKS ARE AVAILABLE IN THE FOLLOWING GALLERIES:
The Fosse Gallery, Gloucestershire
www.fossegallery.com
Cricket Fine Art at ‘Thirteen Langton Street, London
www.cricketfineart.co.uk
Birnam Wood Galleries, New York
www.birnamwoodart.com
The Osborne Studio Gallery, London
www.osg.uk.com
UPCOMING EXHIBITION:
2016 (27th April – Mid May) The Osborne Studio Gallery, London
