About the Artist |
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Lucy Martin's greatest joy has always been exploring the natural world. Her attraction to the strangeness and mystery found in nature has led her to focus in recent years on the marvels of the kingdom of fungi. Lucy paints mushrooms as very much part of their environment, rather than as isolated specimens. The decaying leaves, acorns, fir cones and moss, the lichen and mossy stump, are as important as the mushrooms themselves in her compositions. She thinks of her paintings as small landscapes--glimpses of the forest floor. She began painting mushrooms when she moved to the Santa Cruz mountains in 2006. The abundant winter rainfall and the great botanical diversity in this area makes it a wonderful place to find mushrooms. Many of her paintings are set in these mountains, but she has also found subjects for paintings in Mendocino, the Sierras, Washington state, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and Pennsylvania. Now she lives in Sonoma County and hopes to travel more in coming years to discover new mushrooms. Lucy Martin has been drawing and painting most of her life. She is largely self-taught, with occasion formal study. She studied gouache technique with the artist and illustrator Maryjo Koch, in Bonny Doon, California. She paints in gouache and watercolor, with occasional use of colored pencil. Lucy hopes to convey her deep love for nature, especially for what is often overlooked: those small, unexpected and delightful things we can discover when we look closely. She had an article published in the magazine The Botanical Artist in September 2018 called “Creating Density and Depth with Gouache.” Her article on Gouache Technique will be published in the American Society of Botanical Artists book, Botanical Art Techniques, to be released in September 2020. You can see Lucy Martin's work at the Sebastopol Gallery, 150 N. Main Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472 (707)829-7200, where she is a member, and at the Calabi Gallery, 456 Tenth Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 (707)781-7070. Lucy's new painting, “The Standing Stones of Carnac” has been accepted to the “2020 de Young Open” exhibit at the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco. Due to the public health situation, exhibition dates are to be announced.
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© LUCY MARTIN
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