Lucy Cade

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Lucy Cade is a mixed-media artist inspired by her background in the Classics, Mythology, and the nature of memory and perception.
Lucy segues between figurative and expressionist styles, making for an eclectic range of work.
Although still early in her career, Lucy’s work has already been collected and commissioned throughout the UK.

Lucy Cade (b. 1980, London, UK) is a mixed-media artist. Her process revolves around using manipulated photos and found imagery that she translates into emotive oil paintings. Lucy is well known for her portraiture and figure paintings which are always pregnant with hidden depth and narrative.

Lucy Cade’s Early Career & Inspiration

The artist is mainly self-taught, having studied Classics at Oxford University for her first degree. Whilst there, she spent many evenings as a part-time student in the Life Room at the Ruskin School of Art before completing an art foundation at Oxford Brookes. With a background in Classics, many of her concepts derive from Classical Mythology and Culture. For example, the rural landscape piece Ruins at Norba was inspired by both the 19th-century documentary photography of the Roman ruins in Norba, Italy, and by the Figures in a Landscape paintings of British figurative painter Peter Doig.

Style and Approach

Lucy is fascinated by the effects of light and colour, such as colour polarisation in photography, the blurring of moving images, and moirée effects. She, therefore, often manipulates her images in multiple stages before painting from them. This fascination feeds into Lucy’s interest in evoking lived or remembered experiences and studying the illusory and mediated nature of perception and memory. She uses woven, repeated patterns and shimmering lines to present the world as appearance. In other words, showing how everything is only ever seen through a series of veils and foils, in which the (often female) subject is trapped. Likewise, the artist tends to capture her figures on the verge of an uncertain revelation, playing with the power of paint to explore mood and illusion. This method plunges viewers into a crucial situation and leaves them to decide on its conclusion.

Shows and Press

Lucy’s oil paintings have been exhibited at Modern Art Oxford, at numerous Art Fairs and Midlands galleries and the Mall Galleries in London as part of the ING Discerning Eye (2005). She was also a semi-finalist in the ‘Big Art Challenge’ on ITV in 2004. After just a few shows, her work has already been collected and widely commissioned throughout the UK.

Selected Works

Iana by Lucy Cade

Iana

Paintings - 30x25 cm
Tilt by Lucy Cade

Tilt

Paintings - 30x58 cm
Limbs by Lucy Cade

Limbs

Paintings - 153x122 cm
Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Lucy Cade

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Paintings - 122x153 cm
Adult Fiction by Lucy Cade

Adult Fiction

Paintings - 80x100 cm
To re enter a broken building by Lucy Cade

To re enter a broken building

Paintings - 125x50 cm
Rest, even if you feel like dancing by Lucy Cade
Cat by Lucy Cade

Cat

Paintings - 30x40 cm
Sectioned by Lucy Cade

Sectioned

Paintings - 45x45 cm
Covering Cherub by Lucy Cade

Covering Cherub

Paintings - 80x100 cm

While You Slept

Paintings - 100x100 cm

Chorus

Paintings - 100x80 cm

I became a spider

Paintings - 122x153 cm

The Yellow Temple

Paintings - 100x100 cm

Ruins at Norba

Paintings - 50x50 cm

Wall of (ultra)sound

Paintings - 31x51 cm

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