PFG Lucy Willis March 2022

PIERS FEETHAM GALLERY LUCY WILLIS RWA Memories of the Outside World

8 – 26 March 2022

Lucy Willis RWA Memories of the Outside World Lucy’s paintings are always about seeing; they are what she sees in an alleyway in Tunisia, in a square where boys play football near a madrassa in Aleppo or again in a courtyard thronged with geese.

For some she was actually sitting in the street, working in a race against time to catch the movement of the figures, the changes of sunlight and shadows of leaves. In others, by contrast, during the Covid lockdowns, she worked at home, but these places too are as real, painted miraculously to create the scenes she remembers.

Home for her is in Somerset, in fact not far from where I live. We share the same seasons, the same changing weather. And we have both travelled widely abroad and chosen many of the same kinds of subjects. But her speciality, as you see here, has always been figures, especially women, sitting in interiors or walking in sunlight or rain.

When you look at these pictures, whether the ones painted on the spot or those painted from sketches, photos of past travels or entirely from memory, do not forget that each one started as an empty sheet of white paper. Pigment, water and brush created these watercolours from nothing.

Years of practice have established her techniques and the skill to produce these vibrant images: the spaces in them - the room itself in which the Carpet Collectors sit or the garden in Istanbul - have substance. You can feel the hot colours of the fabrics and hangings making a place in which the Collectors can sit and regard you. The garden, where strong trees with white paint on their trunks establish the foreground, also drifts away into the sunlight beyond and the distant buildings.

Lucy sees all this and through her paintings we can see it too.

John Newberry RWS 2022 Cover:

The Alleyway, Tunisia watercolour 42 x 60 cm

Garden at the Yesil Ev, Istanbul watercolour 35.5 x 50 cm

White Bougainvillea watercolour 59.5 x 42 cm

Greek Interior II watercolour 38 x 30 cm

Sitting on the Front Steps, Syros watercolour 42 x 60 cm

Cathedral Geese, Barcelona watercolour 38 x 57 cm

Summer’s Evening, Barcelona watercolour 38 x 56.5 cm

The Carpet Collectors

The Souk Kairouan, Tunisia

watercolour 38 x 26.5 cm

watercolour 28 x 19 cm

Football in Aleppo watercolour 26 x 37.5 cm

Old Tbilisi, Georgia watercolour 57 x 76 cm

The Western Wall, Night watercolour 37.5 x 56 cm

Novices at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre watercolour 56.5 x 40 cm

By the Church of the Dormition watercolour 38 x 28 cm

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Dawn watercolour 42 x 59.5 cm

The Olive Grove, Jerusalem watercolour 38 x 56 cm

Steps by the citadel, Aleppo

Barcelona Orange Tree

watercolour 32 x 23 cm

watercolour 38 x 29 cm

Wind and Rain, Jerusalem watercolour 38 x 56 cm

February Sunshine, Jerusalem watercolour 38 x 56 cm

The Garden of St Anne’s, Jerusalem watercolour 38 x 56 cm

Taking Tea, Aleppo, Syria watercolour 32 x 56 cm

Ethiopians, Jerusalem watercolour 28 x 44 cm

Pilgrims, Jerusalem watercolour 28 x 44 cm

Morning, Jerusalem watercolour 37 x 47 cm

Kafeneion, Tinos watercolour 16 x 21 cm

Ancient Tombs in the Kidron Valley watercolour 19 x 28 cm

Travellers’ Tales, Greece watercolour 25.5 x 37.5 cm

Land Sea and Sky 8

Land Sea and Sky 5

watercolour 28 x 19 cm

watercolour 28 x 19 cm

Lucy Willis RWA Lucy Willis was born in 1954 and trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford from 1972-1975. She is a painter and printmaker, based in Somerset, and this will be her 25th solo exhibition in London. She was most recently represented by the Curwen & New Academy Gallery from 1999 until its closure in 2017.

Her work has won several awards. In 1992 she won the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London for ‘Her Majesty’s Pleasure’, a group portrait resulting from her teaching work in prison. She has work in public and private collections around the world.

She regularly contributes to group exhibitions, including at the Mall Galleries in London and the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, where she was elected an Academician in 1993.

She is well known for her paintings of distant locations and since 1990 she has led painting groups abroad for The Artist magazine. She has painted in places such as Yemen, India, China, North Africa, Syria and most recently Jerusalem in 2019.

In the 1970s she lived and worked in Greece and continues to return there regularly to paint.

She has published four books and many articles on painting technique, and reproductions of her work are available worldwide.

Instagram lucywillisrwa

Cherries on a Plate watercolour 26 x 36 cm