Artist Statement
My work deals with story telling. I make big storybook pages, often involving text.
I am influenced by icons and altar-panels. I work with mixed media drawings and with printmaking; both traditional and digital.
In the large scale work I group drawing and digital images together to make a single piece, as I think that a drawing can sometimes be more real, and more honest, than a photograph. Conversely, a photograph can have all of its reality removed. I like the play between the two versions of reality.
I am interested in how we view and read images
I am interested in the various way we make and interpreted marks.
The use of animal imagery.
Animals have always played a huge part in our myths, legends and religious beliefs. Since we have lived in caves we have used animals to tell stories, give warnings and make magic; from Red Riding Hood and her ill fated granny to Apocalyptic end times.
We also use animal behavior to describe human conditions: ‘as strong as a horse’, ‘as sick as a dog’,’as stubborn as a mule’, and no man would ever want to be called an old goat. Our ability to understand animal iconography and symbolism is as innate as our subconscious.
Romantic Fiction
With these digital poster prints I want to create pieces that are shown in public spaces. They would intermingle with advertisements in an urban area or stand out in contrast to a rural setting. Ideally these pieces would be pasted to trees, lamp posts, notice boards or bill boards as advertisements on the states of love, life and death. I am interested in how different settings affect the meaning of the pieces. Is a woodland setting more associated with fairy tale and an urban setting with gritty reality? In the physical making and ‘mark making’ I wanted to push the bounds of the image until it was somewhere between drawing and photography.
On and on they went further into the forest
Dogs are to woods what wolves are to the forest. Symbolically dogs are creatures of domestic harmony and fidelity and conversely wolves are at their core the embodiment of physical instinct and sexual danger. Forests are dark and dangerous places of great beauty. They remind us of our primeval past. Farmland has been tamed, like the domestic dog, it bears the marks of man drawn into the environment. We inhabit one but are irresistibly drawn to the other. We tend to emulate the environment to which we are exposed.
Waiting for the Apocalypse
This is a large work; a grouping of seven individual pieces, four oil and varnish drawings and three digital prints. This series is based on the acceptance of death in our lives. Ours is a routine and gentle apocalypse. The horses are waiting for their riders, the girls and their actions are repetitive, they are surface, like wallpaper. We all wait for our own personal apocalypse calmly but mostly we ignore its inevitability.
Small Dogs Big
These large etchings are like pages from a storybook, they show the true size of the terrier and his human counterpart. When confronted with the size and intensity of the rebuke, who among us can confront it?
Lucy Phelan 2017
My work deals with story telling. I make big storybook pages, often involving text.
I am influenced by icons and altar-panels. I work with mixed media drawings and with printmaking; both traditional and digital.
In the large scale work I group drawing and digital images together to make a single piece, as I think that a drawing can sometimes be more real, and more honest, than a photograph. Conversely, a photograph can have all of its reality removed. I like the play between the two versions of reality.
I am interested in how we view and read images
I am interested in the various way we make and interpreted marks.
The use of animal imagery.
Animals have always played a huge part in our myths, legends and religious beliefs. Since we have lived in caves we have used animals to tell stories, give warnings and make magic; from Red Riding Hood and her ill fated granny to Apocalyptic end times.
We also use animal behavior to describe human conditions: ‘as strong as a horse’, ‘as sick as a dog’,’as stubborn as a mule’, and no man would ever want to be called an old goat. Our ability to understand animal iconography and symbolism is as innate as our subconscious.
Romantic Fiction
With these digital poster prints I want to create pieces that are shown in public spaces. They would intermingle with advertisements in an urban area or stand out in contrast to a rural setting. Ideally these pieces would be pasted to trees, lamp posts, notice boards or bill boards as advertisements on the states of love, life and death. I am interested in how different settings affect the meaning of the pieces. Is a woodland setting more associated with fairy tale and an urban setting with gritty reality? In the physical making and ‘mark making’ I wanted to push the bounds of the image until it was somewhere between drawing and photography.
On and on they went further into the forest
Dogs are to woods what wolves are to the forest. Symbolically dogs are creatures of domestic harmony and fidelity and conversely wolves are at their core the embodiment of physical instinct and sexual danger. Forests are dark and dangerous places of great beauty. They remind us of our primeval past. Farmland has been tamed, like the domestic dog, it bears the marks of man drawn into the environment. We inhabit one but are irresistibly drawn to the other. We tend to emulate the environment to which we are exposed.
Waiting for the Apocalypse
This is a large work; a grouping of seven individual pieces, four oil and varnish drawings and three digital prints. This series is based on the acceptance of death in our lives. Ours is a routine and gentle apocalypse. The horses are waiting for their riders, the girls and their actions are repetitive, they are surface, like wallpaper. We all wait for our own personal apocalypse calmly but mostly we ignore its inevitability.
Small Dogs Big
These large etchings are like pages from a storybook, they show the true size of the terrier and his human counterpart. When confronted with the size and intensity of the rebuke, who among us can confront it?
Lucy Phelan 2017
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