Digital Art School: Lucy Stein
Lucy hosts the next of our Seasalt and Hospital Rooms artist-led workshops, available for anyone to access.
THE WORKSHOP
Potato printing
Lucy Stein’s workshop reimagines potato printing with a fun and energetic twist.
You will need:
- A3 cartridge paper
- Acrylic paint in a range of colours
- Paintbrushes
- Four or five large potatoes
- A flat surface or palette
- A jar of water
Fancy joining in with others for this workshop? You can #createalong with Lucy on the 29th of October – sign up.
THE ARTIST
Next up to host one of our virtual workshops with our charity partner Hospital Rooms is St Just based artist Lucy Stein, whose work encompasses painting, performance and film, building upon British modernist painting, feminist theory and women’s literature.
Lucy describes her painterly language as less a postmodern play with visual codes than an extrapolation of a contemporary female painter’s relationship to painterly traditions. She gives equal attention to both personal and art history with the imitative relationship between the female body and the landscape binding ideas together.
Having studied at Glasgow School of Art and de Ateliers, Amsterdam, Lucy moved to Cornwall a decade ago following an intense period of living and working in Berlin. She had experienced ‘burn-out’ and was drawn by the landscape as well as family connections.
Stein completed a six-month residency at Tate St Ives in 2015, which embraced painting, public talks, film screenings and performance rehearsals, culminating in a collaborative musical performance entitled ‘The Wise Wound’. Her recent solo exhibitions have been based across the UK and Europe from London to Austria and Switzerland.
She has also taught at Falmouth University, as well as presenting NTS radio show ‘Squirming the Worm’ as her alter ego Coco de Moll.
Can you tell us a bit about your artistic practice?
I paint, draw, write and sometimes make videos and performances.
How does Cornwall impact, influence or find its way into your work?
I have set my work in Cornwall for the past decade, five years before I moved here. Through my family on my father’s side the folklore and history of the region made its way deeply into my psyche, not to mention our own complex history with the place and its curses. This is also the case when it comes to my understanding of painting in Britain.
This season our designers were inspired by the Cornish Modernists – has the work of these pioneers of the twentieth century laid any foundations for you, or does your work take any lead from these artists?
Most of them weren’t ethnically Cornish, but who cares. I dance with their different ghosts in my studio depending on my mood or what’s going on in my life. At the moment I’m trying to channel the cheerful, confident elegance of the goddess, Sandra Blow. I’m also always communing with Ithell Colquhoun who wasn’t strictly part of the ‘Modernist’ gang but her project certainly was ‘Modern’. I tend to prefer her writings to her paintings.
Can you tell us a little about your connection to Seasalt?
Seasalt have kindly supported the project with Hospital Rooms. I’m fascinated by their ability to gracefully transcend the problems faced by every other retailer on the high street and I respect their commitment to mental health awareness.
Why did you decide to get involved with Hospital Rooms and Digital Art School?
Tim and Niamh asked me and I like them very much as people. I am from a family of brain doctors and neurally diverse people and I’m about to embark on a training in psychoanalysis so it makes sense to me.
Which part of the project are you most excited about?
The idea of helping in some way to alleviate the boredom of being in hospital.
What positive connections do you see between art and mental health?
Art is therapy for me.
Tell us about your online workshop and what people can expect…
Potato printing. Dissolution of the id, ego and super-ego through actions upon and with the psychic vessel of the humble and numb potato.
How do you feel about hosting a workshop online?
Great!
How have you found these Covid times?
I had a baby. I’m overwrought, overweight and overwhelmed anyway!
Who should get involved with Digital Art School?
Anyone who wants to explore radical sensitivity and starch.
