As a great, great granddaughter of writer Charles Dickens, writing plays an important part in Lucy’s life. Her paintings often have a narrative quality, leaving you wondering what went before, or what will happen next. As well as humour, her recent work contains a lot of vibrant colour and exuberance.
Lucy Dickens, A day at the races, collage and gouache on watercolour paper, 76 × 56 cm
Lucy Dickens, Smiley’s people, collage and gouache on watercolour paper, 76 × 56 cm
Lucy Dickens, The towel attendant, 101 × 76 cm
After school Lucy studied fashion journalism and started as a stylist at Condé Nast, where she soon became fashion editor of Brides magazine. Her passion for materials, and how people express themselves through fashion, continues to this day. When she started her own family she began writing and illustrating childrens’ books which were published in London and New York.
Lucy Dickens, Girl in pheasant hat (remembering Isabella Blow), 45 × 30 cm
This May she has a show at Cricket Fine Art and as the catalogue arrived she and Sarah flick through it with Lucy explaining the background behind the pictures. She says she likes to portray groups of people and works in many mediums from oils, acrylics and gouaches, to bold graphic fabric collages. The series of Japanese paintings reflect her love of travel.
Lucy Dickens, Wet windy Sunday, Tokyo, 61 × 122 cm
Lucy often puts in a cameo appearance in her own work. A self-portrait below shows her framed within a picture At the Picasso Museum and again in Cyclists and Whippets, Hyde Park Corner where you can she her as a passenger peeping out of the back of a bus, centre left of painting.
Lucy Dickens, At the Picasso Museum, 2019
Lucy Dickens, Cyclist and whippets, Hyde Park Corner, 101 × 76 cm
A great observer of people, lover of dogs and fan of London, Cyclist and Whippets, Hyde Park Corner speaks of Lucy’s skill to snatch a view from a bus and make it immortal.
Sarah and Lucy, school photo, Littlefields, Hampshire
Lucy comes from a creative family. Her mother Julia Dickens paints, while her sister Sophie Dickens is a renowned sculptor whose work you can see at Sladmore Contemporary Gallery, or on her website: sophiedickens.co.uk.
Credits
Oh, I’ve got oat milk if you’d rather. No. No. No. No.
Sarah Monk:No. It’s fine. Just not much of it.
Lucy Dickens:Yes. Okay,
Lucy Dickens:Now listen, so we can talk about everything and I suppose you will edit all the rubbish? there will be lots of that I can assure you, i’m in a very mad mood.
Sarah Monk:Hi, this is Sarah with another episode of Materially Speaking, where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose. Today, I’m chatting with Lucy Dickens, artist, illustrator and great great granddaughter of writer Charles Dickens. She works in many mediums: oils, acrylics, gouache and fabric collages. She is preparing for her show at Cricket Fine Art, and I’m meeting her at her house to peruse her catalog. Lucy welcomes me into her beautiful North London home in a navy boiler suit and Doc Martens.
Sarah Monk:Her stylish house is full of character: quirky antique furniture, painted floors, chairs covered in fabrics from India or beyond, collected on an adventure abroad. But, like for many, the pandemic has been a watershed, and she and her husband are moving to be near the sea.
Sarah Monk:We’ve been friends for years, so we start in the kitchen as usual making tea and laughing. Gossip tumbles out any old how as it does with someone you’ve known your whole life. It’s not so much that we finish each other’s sentences, but so we never really finish any. Tell me what you’re waving at me.
Lucy Dickens:Oh, I’m waving my new catalogue, which has been a long time in the coming and the making because, you know, I was supposed to have a show last year and then the pandemic came along. So just had to put everything on hold. And then going down to live in Hampshire for, well, a whole year, my whole work sort of changed slightly.
Sarah Monk:In what way?
Lucy Dickens:I think it’s that thing of being with nature. It just became more creative, more imaginary.
Sarah Monk:But you mean imaginary actually, don’t you?
Lucy Dickens:I do, I do. It all came pouring out but just very different from my other work.
Sarah Monk:So how did that start?
Lucy Dickens:How did that start? I think it was that we’re surrounded by birds and butterflies and I just think it just gives your brain, well it stimulates but also gives the brain a rest in some sort of way. And then you absorb it and then it just starts coming out on canvas. And I started using different mediums too. I started working more with gouache and
Sarah Monk:How did that begin and why?
Lucy Dickens:Well, I suppose I was becoming more liberated with the way I was using mediums through Instagram, which we’ve talked about because really the Instagram, which I’ve been doing now for I suppose three or four years,
Lucy Dickens:That was very liberating in that I started, instead of just using oils all the time, was using lots of other mediums.
Sarah Monk:Remind me why you started Instagram, because you were one of the trailblazers too.
Lucy Dickens:I was not keen at all. And then my daughter, Loni, she kept saying, This is going be great for you. And I kept saying, No, I don’t understand it. I don’t want to do it. And also my daughter-in-law, they were both putting pressure.
Lucy Dickens:And in the end, I just thought, I’m going to give it a go. And it’s been the best thing for me. It’s sort of loosened me up because I think I was just working in oils at that point and I think I was so precious about oh, I can only work in oils. It’s absolutely rubbish. Oils, I don’t really paint in oils anymore, I’ve got a few in this new show but it’s nearly all acrylics.
Lucy Dickens:Acrylics have improved hugely since I first started using the museums.
Sarah Monk:In what way?
Lucy Dickens:Well the texture, I was thinking, no. Can’t possibly use acrylics because I don’t like the way they feel. They don’t feel like oils.
Lucy Dickens:They’re so wonderful and liberating. They dry immediately. The colors are amazing. They blend beautifully. They work very well for me because I paint in thin layers.
Lucy Dickens:And you can scrape the whole well, you don’t even need to scrape the whole thing off. You can then paint over what you’ve got, and then you get this underpainting coming through too. That’s very exciting too. So I don’t have that problem anymore, because this is a new thing for me, of jumping from gouache to collage to whatever. I think that’s through Instagramming and just working daily on sketching or you know, was doing funny drawings, was actually doing a drawing a day for a year and a half.
Sarah Monk:I remember the discipline in that was quite extraordinary to me. You’ve always been early start, dog walk, kid duty and then. You’ve got a very strong work ethic, Lucy.
Lucy Dickens:I don’t know, I think I have got my discipline but I think to be an artist you absolutely have to. You have to be so dedicated. I know it’s a very natural thing with me because actually, again I’m jumping, but I was thinking, because I knew, obviously I was talking to you today, that I was drawing. You know, I was sitting in the Royal Naval School where I used to go to school. I had an amazing, I still got it, a drawing book full of drawings of the girls sitting around me, the teachers.
Emmanuel Fillion:And which class was this in?
Lucy Dickens:This was after you and I, or after you left.
Sarah Monk:No, but it doesn’t sound like the art class
Lucy Dickens:No, it doesn’t have anything to do with the art class, this was other classes. And I was just sitting at the back door, I was still, you know, then, of course I was, you know, a marquee artist without even realising.
Sarah Monk:We should probably declare, we’ve known each other since we were how old?
Lucy Dickens:Three? Oh!
Sarah Monk:But I remember you, you know, I’ve got pictures on my wall that were sketches you did of a dog we had as a baby, one of the St. Bernards, you know, and when I was a teenager. So you were always sketching. So tell me, although I know I’d love to hear it from you, about your childhood and your background?
Lucy Dickens:My Ma’s side, she’s an amazing artist in her own right. My house is full of her extraordinary watercolours, still painting to this day, she’s nearly 86. On her side my grandmother was a fantastic artist.
Sarah Monk:I didn’t know that.
Lucy Dickens:Well, but she never went to, she she just went to, you know, classes, but she had that in her. And my great aunts on that side, they had an errand weaving house.
Sarah Monk:Really?
Lucy Dickens:Yeah. So that was on that side.
Lucy Dickens:Then my father’s side, well, there’s the Dickens, the creative thing in the writing, you know, with Charles Dickens. Who is your great Great great grandfather. But with that, my father writes beautifully and my brother actually. Writing’s really important to me too and funnily enough, with the daily Instagrams I was doing, I was writing a little piece every day.
Sarah Monk:Very hilariously, if I may say so.
Lucy Dickens:Because yeah, and I see life in a humorous way, I would say, mostly. And I so I got the confidence to write and be free with my work and it was so liberating not being precious about my oils and it just set me free and then somehow going down and living away from the city, I love London, I’ll always love London, but being away, being in the country, looking at things in a different way, that was also very liberating to me. My work has sort of shifted, I would say, and I’m working more and more in my imagination.
Sarah Monk:Tell me or tell us what you did after school?
Lucy Dickens:So the choice was, you know, could have gone to art school but I never liked being taught to paint. I wasn’t good at being taught. I had to work things out for myself. So I actually came to London, did a fashion, because fashion is my other passion. It was a journalist course.
Sarah Monk:Because your father was a journalist?
Lucy Dickens:Yes, but it was a fashion journalist course, it was a new course at the London College of Fashion, which is now incredibly smart and popular. In those days, it was probably not so grand. But anyway, so I did a year there and then I went to Conde Nast and I got a job on Vogue. I mean, I was incredibly lucky. And so the art was on hold except I suppose very early on I started doing illustrations in my spare time.
Lucy Dickens:So I started doing the odd illustration for Vogue, for Brides and for other magazines.
Sarah Monk:And you were a great stylist.
Lucy Dickens:And I love styling. I mean I ended up as a fashion and beauty editor of Brides of all things, which is part of Conde Nast and I had a wonderful time with these mad dresses. I used to you could have the designers design you dresses. So in stories, I did a Tissot story. So all these gorgeous models in Tissot style dresses and I travel all over the place.
Lucy Dickens:I mean, I literally I go with my cases of dresses and photographers and my team of hairdressers and makeup artists and off we go all over the place. It was a great job. At that point, I wasn’t thinking about being an artist, but of course in a way you learn as a stylist all the time you’re looking at pages. So you’re looking at how your photographs look on a page. And so I think I learned my style, if you look at my work, is quite reportage-y.
Lucy Dickens:So I like even on the cover I’m showing you now of my new catalogue, you know, you’ve got these ladies here in their mad hats, this is a collage. You’ve got a horse’s bum sticking out, you know, coming off the page and some legs at the top so you, it’s like a moving thing.
Sarah Monk:It’s a story?
Lucy Dickens:It’s a story, it’s a happening story, it’s a glimpse of what’s happening. You see?
Sarah Monk:Yes, I do.
Lucy Dickens:So a lot of my work is like that, you know, it’s it’s that half on half off the page, it’s just a glimpse of something.
Sarah Monk:You did when you were raising your two children, before you had step children, children’s books?
Lucy Dickens:Yes and we sold them all over the place. I seem to remember dogs There was Dirty Henry. Dirty Dirty There was gosh, can’t remember the name of my books. It’s terrible. I started with board books.
Lucy Dickens:Oh no, Rosie’s Paddling Pool is my first Rosie’s Paddling Pool. And they were all based on my two children. I suppose I did about eight books, very simple, still illustrating and then I began to think no, no, no, I want to paint. There’s more to me than this and so I started working with oils. I hadn’t picked up a brush really, an oil brush since I was at school and just began to work through all these styles.
Lucy Dickens:It took me a few years till I found my own style.
Sarah Monk:What were your inspirations?
Lucy Dickens:My early inspirations, I’m just trying to think, they were very dark and moody, think it was quite a dark difficult time for me. I think it showed in my work, everything was very Prussian blue. It was very light and shade, light and shade what am I trying to say?
Lucy Dickens:That was the most important thing. Moody, chiaroscuro. That was the thing. That for me was crucial.
Lucy Dickens:So light and shade, very dark, the little edges of light.
Sarah Monk:In that little dip shall we call
Lucy Dickens:Yes.
Lucy Dickens:I do remember a painting of yours that was a person sitting on a bench in a park.
Lucy Dickens:Yes, I know the one.
Sarah Monk:You know the one and it touched me deeply because I was lonely then too. Yeah. You know, touching on the illustration as though it’s light, but it really isn’t light.
Lucy Dickens:But the funny thing is that it was very dark at that stage. I didn’t realise that somewhere deep down there was this huge sense of humour which has popped up in my happiness that I have now and my very wonderful life, you know, which has to do with my partner and my yeah. At that stage, yeah, I think I probably was very lonely or feeling sad and that definitely shows in the work. Funnily enough, that picture, the one that you mentioned, was my first big sale in my first show.
Sarah Monk:Really?
Lucy Dickens:It was thrilling. I had my first show in a wonderful gallery in England’s Lane called the Belgrave Gallery. Irving Gross, he gave me my first chance. I just put some photographs of my work through his letterbox and he rang me up and said I love them and gave me a show. It was just, you know, an artist’s dream.
Lucy Dickens:He was an amazing man.
Sarah Monk:He was, wasn’t he? I Remember him.
Lucy Dickens:A kind, brilliant guy. And then he guided me through to my next gallery I went with, which was the Foss Gallery in Gloucestershire and then I came back into London and I’ve been with Cricket Fine Art now for a long time and I was also with Osborne Studio Gallery, all lovely guys. I’ve been incredibly lucky.
Sarah Monk:But I think it’s rather sweet actually, I think it’s very touching, especially given we have all been living through this pandemic and to a degree still are, that the human spirit is drawn to that emotion of loneliness and it obviously resonated with whoever bought that painting and it resonated with me because I remember it X number of years later.
Lucy Dickens:But the joke is I didn’t even realise. So it’s only when I look at my work now, all people have said, oh God, you had a very dark, My galleries were trying to make me do color. I just couldn’t do it. You couldn’t make me do it. I did a lot of moody bar shots and shot paintings and jazz paintings.
Lucy Dickens:It was all in the dark. It was all dark . Couldn’t do the bright stuff. And then just in the last few years, it’s all just come gushing out.
Lucy Dickens:So let’s talk about the show. When is it happening?
Lucy Dickens:So the show is happening on the May 5 and
Sarah Monk:We’re talking in late April twenty 2021
Lucy Dickens:Is it? I haven’t got a clue what date it is.
Lucy Dickens:Maybe it’s not late April actually, come think of it.
Lucy Dickens:No, I don’t know what it is. I haven’t got a clue what the date it is.
Sarah Monk:I think it might be mid April. How did you feel just before showing this?
Lucy Dickens:Well again I feel remarkably zen think I’m a great meditator. I’d to get that in. And that has changed my life hugely. Sarah, my dear friend here is rolling her eyes thinking there’s no way this girl is zen.
Lucy Dickens:I’ve been jabbering. But I’m sitting here very relaxed and my feet up. But I feel it’s actually it’s had a very good, you know, it’s up online and people seem to like it. So I feel quite relaxed.
Lucy Dickens:So meditation really helps the creative percolation process?
Sarah Monk:Completely!
Lucy Dickens:Everything can sink in and then ideas come up quite clearly. You know, it’s sort of ding, it’s there and you just think, oh, I’m going to do this. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t work, but they’re pushing you towards having a go. And with these wire women, and I think this is going to be fantastic, I’m really excited about it, they don’t always work straight away, but with the meditation, you learn patience. So though I then you learn that they don’t always work and you then have to try and try again.
Lucy Dickens:And so, I mean, with why, you then have to make these awful hashes. I was trying to do birds, and they were too complicated. I then made myself take them all to bits and then use the same wire again. So you just it’s all part of you just are in a better, sort of more patient mode. It’s still very creative, but it’s it’s all about the doing as well in a mindful way.
Lucy Dickens:Oh, that sounded quite deep.
Sarah Monk:Before we talk about the show, because as you say, the show was scheduled for last March was it?
Lucy Dickens:April.
Sarah Monk:April, so obviously with the pandemic that was postponed.
Lucy Dickens:But you then had this, I remember you saying something like congestion. You had a room full of
Lucy Dickens:Oh my god, absolutely packed up there.
Sarah Monk:And then it’s difficult, is it not? If your stuff sort of comes out of you but then doesn’t go to the wider world and everything stops.
Lucy Dickens:So right, then what do you do?
Sarah Monk:What did you do?
Lucy Dickens:Makes it sound romantic but actually it was incredibly difficult. So went down to Hampshire, where we’re lucky enough to have a cottage. Went down, we thought we’ll just be down there for the first lockdown, but in fact, we just stayed. I had painters block really, which I don’t very often get. I didn’t really know what on earth to do, because life felt so different.
Lucy Dickens:So again, it’s that thing of you have to just be patient, let it just drift into your head and just into your imagination and just trust yourself. But basically it was artist block.
Sarah Monk:Well, I mean, also the pandemic did not bring out lovely feelings
Lucy Dickens:I don’t think for me in a way, lockdown has not been a problem. It’s good because I don’t get interruption because interruption is really bad for artists. You need quiet, you need thinking time. So, actually, lockdown has been good for me. So, obviously, I miss my friends and my family.
Lucy Dickens:But what I was going to say was then, while I was having this painter’s block thing, then there was the Trassel Trust thing because the food banks were desperate for money. I just felt so bad about the whole thing, so I decided I was going to raise money. And being this great Instagrammer, I was able to advertise. I had this idea that for £50 you could send me a photograph of your granny or your child or your dog and for £50 I’d do a likeness. And I raised over 4,000.
Sarah Monk:That’s brilliant.
Lucy Dickens:But actually nearly killed me.
Sarah Monk:Bit off a bit more than you can chew.
Lucy Dickens:And that also gave me painter’s block because after that I felt quite mentally exhausted by it because you can’t just run off any old, even if it’s 50 pounds, which is not very much for a good lightness, these were in colour pencils and I was doing probably three a day. But I put everything into those to make them absolutely the best I could, which was a huge strain actually. And after I’d done that, you know, I then had further painters block because I was sort of slightly burnt out by that. Because everything I do, I put a huge amount of oomph into. Shall we look at the catalogue?
Lucy Dickens:So the cover is a collage of these ladies at Ascot. I had great fun slashing out bits of fabric, making these ladies with their nutty hats on, horses dashing about in the background. It’s all very much about composition. You know, you can’t really plan. It’s like sketching with scissors.
Lucy Dickens:And then once you’ve done it, you then got to glue it. And the gluing is gosh, I wish I had an assistant, an assistant who could glue. Nice little young fingers, not fat old fingers. That’s the only thing that puts me off collages is gluing.
Sarah Monk:Really?
Lucy Dickens:I hate i,t being fabulous.
Sarah Monk:Do you use a brush to get like a fine liner glue?
Lucy Dickens:It’s really hard that. I wish I was like Matisse with lots of assistance, you know. And then there’s the worry with these collages. This is my first show I’ve ever shown collages.
Lucy Dickens:That they then get to the framer and you know something has shifted. So it’s not as straightforward as it looks. But anyway, it’s very effective and very strong graphic.
Sarah Monk:This particular one also speaks to your fashion love.
Lucy Dickens:Yes, I’m not interested in high fashion, just so we get that clear.
Lucy Dickens:I’m just interested in fabrics and just individuality. That’s what interests me, not high fashion.
Sarah Monk:So sort of how people dress to express themselves?
Lucy Dickens:Completely, including me. You know, a lot of my clothes are very ancient.
Lucy Dickens:Oh, here we are.
Lucy Dickens:Now that’s so apt. Look at that. There’s the old Dukey, Poor old Dukey.
Sarah Monk:I love that one, royal spectators at the Highland Games.
Lucy Dickens:He’s just been reserved.
Sarah Monk:He’s been reserved. I’m not surprised.
Lucy Dickens:Dear man. Anyway, so there he is with cream.
Sarah Monk:There’s an homage to him in our local ice cream shop.
Lucy Dickens:God, that’s good. I can’t even believe it.
Sarah Monk:North London, I don’t know.
Lucy Dickens:Lovely. Let’s go and have a look.
Sarah Monk:And Hockney.
Lucy Dickens:Hockney in his youth.
Sarah Monk:It’s a great picture of Hockney, but I also wonder Did you not say to me that the coloured pencils that you did for the Trussell Trust…
Lucy Dickens:Yeah, that was inspired by him. Because again, I would have thought, I never really like coloured pencils. They seem too crisp and too neat for me. There was some of his work. His pencil drawings, his coloured pencil drawings are exquisite.
Lucy Dickens:Early drawings. And I thought, I must have a go at this.
Lucy Dickens:He did inspire me. Oh, he’s such a clever man. Anyway, here he is, the collage of him in his youth with his custard yellow hair and his big round glasses. I love this picture.
Lucy Dickens:And in fact, here he matches the picture of the Queen. She is also in custard yellow hat.
Lucy Dickens:As you say, bright colours
Lucy Dickens:bright Here we are, very bright. All the dark has gone.
Sarah Monk:So, horses, quite a lot of horses and I don’t remember you as being a horse lover, you’re giving me a look, like
Lucy Dickens:I am now, but only I mean, I’d become a serious horse lover in this last year again, just communing with the horses that trot past our house. But before that, no, there was a love for I like groups of people and it was the thing of riders on their horses. So it’s not just the horse, it’s the rider on the horse, it’s the white jodgers. It’s that whole theatrical thing of
Sarah Monk:The hunt.
Lucy Dickens:The hunt. Actually, I’m not pro hunting. There’s the fox sitting on the tree laughing at them as they go by. They’ve missed him and he’s sitting on a tree smoking a pipe. So, you know.
Sarah Monk:Obviously.
Lucy Dickens:Obviously, as foxes do. Why wouldn’t they? And these ninkum poops are just shooting past, blowing their trumpets. So there were quite a lot, you know, jockeys on horses, something And again, yes, it’s all very camp and bright and colorful. I think that was actually a way of lifting my spirits in my painting.
Lucy Dickens:So I still love horses. And of course, I love dogs. And there we have a corgi, the Queen’s corgi eating the Queen’s shoe in this next painting. And there’s the Duke sipping a cup of tea. It’s called Tea Time at Buckingham Palace.
Sarah Monk:Wonderful. I quite like corgis actually.
Lucy Dickens:It’s latches on trains, that’s the problem. Here, we’ve got Cyclists and Whippets, Hyde Park Corner.
Lucy Dickens:That looks very dangerous, whippets and wheels.
Lucy Dickens:We’re talking about a big painting in my catalogue, it’s called Cyclists and Whippets, Hyde Park Corner. I was sitting, you can see me in this painting, sitting at the back of bus.
Lucy Dickens:I actually saw this woman. I was going around High Park Corner on the bus, and this mad woman, very English, with her three whippets whisked out on her bicycle onto this huge, mad
Sarah Monk:Crazy corner there.
Lucy Dickens:Corner with all these buses and taxis. So obviously, I got that down in my little sketchbook.
Sarah Monk:You often have nowadays, don’t you, a little guest appearance?
Lucy Dickens:Yes, because I think, not that I look very interesting, but it is the artist’s view of life. So yes, crops up quite often.
Lucy Dickens:More collages and do you want to go through this?
Sarah Monk:Yes, I love Smileys People.
Lucy Dickens:Smileys People. And what I think what works very well in collages, you keep the colors to a minimum and it’s a chance for me to be very graphic.
Lucy Dickens:This is mad. This is a circus in the sky. So this is more, the bird life down in Hampshire.
Lucy Dickens:We spend so much time looking at the birds out of the window. These amazing clear skies you get. And so on we go, there’s just
Sarah Monk:A series of work.
Lucy Dickens:Yes, this is a good series. Japanese series.
Sarah Monk:Okay. And?
Lucy Dickens:I mean, Japan, Tom and I went it was just four years ago now. But then it took I mean, it took over two years for this sort of to sink in. You’d think you’d go on an amazing journey and then you’d come back and you’d just paint it, but I can’t do that. You just have to let it brew. I mean, the thing that came up and came through in my work was these groups of people.
Lucy Dickens:I’ve always been quite into groups of people, quite often in uniform. Here
Lucy Dickens:Tell me what we’re looking at.
Lucy Dickens:Ladies of a certain age on outings in groups In Japan. In Japan in their beautiful silk kimonos. Because most of the younger generation don’t really bother with kimonos.
Lucy Dickens:Sometimes you see them at weekends all dressed up in very flowery cotton ones. But the elder ladies have these beautiful silk kimonos. And then they had these coats that they wear over the top, exquisite. And in the rain, they had these beautiful matching umbrellas. We went to various gardens in the bamboo forest, and we saw these groups of ladies.
Lucy Dickens:And these were the ones that inspired me to do these paintings. Also, we were in Tokyo, we went on the Japanese underground, whatever that is, all these, mostly, well, in this picture, it’s all men. Strap hanging. Strap hanging, looking gray, and an exhausted salaryman. And here’s another image.
Lucy Dickens:We saw this is a very rare sight in Kyoto, a maiko, which is a young geisha, trainee geisha, clip clopping in her platforms. You can’t believe how high these platforms are and all this wonderful paraphernalia coming down an alleyway in the dark with me chasing on behind her. I was hysterical with the whole thing was just too much. She was so beautiful. She ignored me completely.
Lucy Dickens:She had this painted on white face, this amazing makeup, this blossom in her hair. Oh, she was exquisite. Anyway, she’s down here. Myco inky She was just marvellous. And on we go.
Lucy Dickens:Next page in the catalogue, there is, this is called Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. And this is me with my dog, Lenny, the lurcher, who’s no longer with us. And we miss him. He was my muse. Oh, he was my love.
Lucy Dickens:Here he is in a John Lennon cap, as he would be in a boat with me.
Sarah Monk:I think I should add that Lucy does not dress up her dogs, or at least I haven’t seen you do it
Lucy Dickens:No, here he’s got
Sarah Monk:Roam free and dirty.
Lucy Dickens:Yeah, he’s got a bandana on, and he looks very John Lennon ish. And we’re in the sky with diamonds. I love that painting.
Sarah Monk:Do you find it hard to sell the ones that are that personal?
Lucy Dickens:No, there are some that are too personal to sell and I do hold on to them. But this one, somehow I’m happy enough to give up. But, yeah, I’ve got my little secret stash, which I’ll never give up. And I’ve got so many drawings of my dear doggy, actually, so that I’ll never sell.
Sarah Monk:And this one looks like Ascot?
Lucy Dickens:Another Ascot one. This is part of this new lockdown in Hampshire thing. I’ve become a real old twitcher, a birder. We have masses of goldfinches in our part of the world down there.
Lucy Dickens:The birds are in the front, larger than life, and I’m this little mad person in the back with my hat and glasses on, sunglasses.
Sarah Monk:Oh, here’s a Rudy Nudi one.
Lucy Dickens:This is a Rudy Nudi one and it’s called the towel attendant. And this is inspired by a visit to Germany. We went and stripped off and did this steam bath thing.
Lucy Dickens:Germans are very good at this, but I thought, oh, I’m not gonna like this. But it was marvellous. It was fabulously liberating. Of course, I hadn’t got my glasses on, so I could barely see all this rather pink flesh everywhere.
Sarah Monk:I don’t think you sketched in there, I’m guessing.
Lucy Dickens:No, but the memory, it does hold on to all this stuff. Anyway, within all this, there’s lots of people in this picture, all with not a stitch on. Coming through in the middle is a man in his white uniform with a pile of white towels, and it’s called the towel attendant. In this color palette, you’ve got the flesh colors, and you’ve really only got like three other colours that I’ve used. I literally gave myself a very small palette.
Lucy Dickens:So even though it’s busy, it’s contained.
Sarah Monk:And I love the humour too, the fact that the one that we’re noticing and talking about, the odd one out, is the one with clothes on.
Lucy Dickens:Yes, exactly. These two mad ladies, this is Face to Face.
Sarah Monk:And another thing, they look like that’s what they’re saying to each other.
Lucy Dickens:Oh yes, yes, and another thing. These two eccentric ladies staring at each other with their calico faces. They were inspired by my great well, my mother’s great aunts, who were the ones with the weaving houses and used to wear all these amazing, very eccentric clothes. So this is in my imagination what they look like. And these, these are the the gouache that you see.
Lucy Dickens:They’re more dreamlike because you can get this quality with this paint on a wet surface, way it moves, the move it back.
Lucy Dickens:this piece is new to me. I’ve only done these in the last few months. I really like these.
Sarah Monk:What’s next for you then?
Lucy Dickens:Well, at this very moment, because we’re moving houses and I’ve got the show on, I’m not painting, I’m working in wire now. So I’m doing two d collages in a way. So it’s like sketching with wire and I’ve been doing these huge faces. Again, they’re not unlike these ladies from face to face. And they’ve got fabric turbans on and suede red lips, and they hang.
Lucy Dickens:I’m making them so I’m doing a collection of heads. And then they’ll hang from the ceiling, a circular piece.
Sarah Monk:Like a mobile.
Lucy Dickens:Like a mobile.
Sarah Monk:How does that come about? I’ve seen them on Instagram.
Lucy Dickens:Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, they’ve just popped up in my head.
Sarah Monk:It’s nothing to do with sort of packing your clothes and the move and
Lucy Dickens:No, no. You know, these ideas just pop up when I’m supposed to be meditating. I get these huge, very strong visions that come because your head is clear and the clearer it is, the more creative I get.
Sarah Monk:Great. Another thing I was musing on, as I was preparing to chat with you, was that both of our parents, well your mother and my father, worked with wood.
Lucy Dickens:Yes, they did.
Sarah Monk:I was thinking about his workshop, do you remember?
Lucy Dickens:Oh I loved his workshop. Which one, the cellar or the one in the Oh,
Lucy Dickens:I’m only thinking about his cellar.
Sarah Monk:The cellar was extraordinary.
Lucy Dickens:I mean, him going down to that cellar in his green
Sarah Monk:Green coat, which I still have in the roof, can’t throw it away.
Lucy Dickens:You know, there’ll probably be a set of paintings in the making of him, because these things, these childhood memories of your dad creating these serpents, these amazing handmade, beautiful instruments down in his cellar. Then your marble packed them up and send them off to America, and it was it was seemed very glamorous.
Sarah Monk:Well, the cellar was haunted. The Saint Bernard used to rush past that door like there was wind up their tail, because they were terrified of something.
Lucy Dickens:I’m not surprised, anyway, there is definitely a series of paintings to be done.
Sarah Monk:And then your mother was such a hard worker, not content with, the demands of five children. She also had this fabulous shop where we were brought up, which restored and sold old furniture. Mainly pine in those days, wasn’t it?
Lucy Dickens:In the early days, she was known as Stripper Dickens. She would stand in Wellington boots with some terrible concoction, you know, stripping pine. Yes, Sarah’s got the stare at it. But she was, she was known as Stripper Dickens. Anyway, she used to sell collections of old beautiful boxes and things to Barneys in New York, my mother.
Lucy Dickens:And she’s still, yeah, just 86 painting and gardening and cooking and just the most magical woman really. My Ma.
Lucy Dickens:She is, anything else?
Sarah Monk:I think it maybe another cup of tea. So thanks to Lucy Dickens. You can see her work on her Instagram at @Lucy_mdickens or on her website lucydickens.com. You can discover her show at cricketfineart.co.uk. And thanks to you for listening.
Sarah Monk:As with all episodes, can find photographs of the work discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com, or on Instagram. If you’re enjoying Materially Speaking, please subscribe to our newsletter so we can send you news and let you know when the next episode goes live. And if you feel moved to leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform, that would be great, as that will help people find us.
Sarah Monk:Join us for our next episode where I shall be talking to Franco American artist Emmanuel Fillion, whose fabulously fluid portrayals of women were first inspired by dancers.
Emmanuel Fillion:All I could see was, like, moving sculptures. You know? Like, I I didn’t see them as people anymore. It was, like, moving sculptures around me. I was like, oh my god. I have a lifetime of inspiration here.
Emmanuel Fillion:I guess that’s what I love. It’s expression, the corporal expression, know, like when you process your body, because we are not our body. We are our soul. Beauty is not just about the aspect. It’s also about the moment and what it represents.
Sarah Monk:Join us for our next episode with Emmanuel Fillion.