C. Lucy R. Whitehead

I get up around 6:30 am, turn on Radio4, make tea, put coffee on, feed the cats, empty the dishwasher, have a shower, boil some eggs and make a lunch, then walk to my studio in Brixton via a swim in the lido if it’s sunny (I’m a fair weather swimmer) or gym if not. Turn on 6 Music and start painting around 10 after I’ve organised my rags and palette (as I usually leave in a rush the day before). I’ll usually paint pretty solidly till 4 pm or 5 pm, then go for a drink with my studio mates and then head home, make dinner with my girlfriend and then hit the hay. (My morning is the only part which I’ve managed to crack having much of a routine).

I think if you ask most artists who went to art school in the UK, that there is very little you learn in terms of skills and techniques—at least in terms of painting and drawing. The format of the education concentrates more on how to think critically about your work (and others) and helping you establish what work you want to make. The practical elements you learn from trial and error, books, and especially from the students around you. The latter is i think the most valuable part of being at arts school. I was fortunate enough to make a really strong connection with a number of my peers at the RCA who I still share a studio with now, and it’s from working alongside them which has been one of the biggest accelerators in the quality of my work.
It’s very easy to become so consumed by a body of work that you lose your head a bit with it, so having different sets of eyes and perspectives, especially from people you really respect, on what you’re doing is really important.

I think that’s most peoples’ interpretation, but I see the whole natural world as made up of little machines, systems and networks, the body especially. From a young age I’ve seen parts of the body displayed as anatomical structures made up of tubes and pathways—my grandparents were physiotherapists and my mum was a nurse, so we had posters all over the house which showed cross-sections of feet and ears. Likewise, growing up in Liverpool by the docks, I saw the same unity of mechanisms used to lug containers into ships.
But I think the coldness and stiffness you refer to, of the type of machine you immediately think of, is a crucial part to the work. Because ultimately, we don’t want to think of our bodies in that way or perhaps we can’t? I think it’s part of our human existence to need to elevate our bodies past being something functional and into something higher and more spiritual. It’s that area between the functional and the spiritual within the body which really intrigues me.

I’ve been working on these ideas for a good few years now—abstracting the body in different ways each time, taking elements from the last trying to figure out how best to achieve it. My work has gone through many stages and processes to get to where I am now, and classical anatomical drawing still plays a part in the make up of these images. But I now use it as only the beginning of the process rather than the end point.

Exactly this. The palette I choose tends to exist on a sliding scale, where if the form appears more familiar I’ll balance with lesser so colours, and vice versa.

Not much! Other than making me realise how much it finds its way into more and more ideas and aspects of life, consciously or otherwise.

I think art can play a role in anything if as an observer you want it to, and there are certainly a lot of artists at the moment dealing with notions around body image head on. Which is a positive evolution from previous depictions of the body in art. I like to think that my work deals with those topics more indirectly by eliminating them from the work entirely. I personally find viewing the body as just a strange object which under the surface is just trying to keep us chugging along silences all the noise above.

Some titles come to me just as I’m working on them, maybe a phrase in a song or book which resonates at the time—such as Before the Devil Knows and Two Cents. The others I feel are more representative of exactly how you said ‘spiritual’; I’m often drawn to terms used to describe people or relationships, or moments in those relationships that also describe something inanimate such as ‘anchor’ and ‘the sanctuary’.

I love walking over the river, the parks, the people, the amount of different types of people, the culture, the pomp, the grandeur, and the grit. I hate how much a pint is and the tube in summer.

I’ve purposely kept myself clear work-wise after this show to reflect a bit and see how best to develop next, so with the exception of a couple of group shows, I’ll be trying to find some sun, coming up with new work, and actually I’m really excited about dipping my toe further into bronze sculpture, which I really got into for this show.