Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Lucey.
Hi Kevin, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire and have lived in the Boston area, and the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Los Angeles.
I was always making repetitive marks, dots, lines, and grids in places like the margins of school assignments, folders, napkins, dirt, sand, etc… Even as a kid, I loved the performance of drawing– that it could be tied to a place or a moment. I remember making art without really having an awareness of it– like making patterns with my feet by pressing my toes in the sand as I walked along York Beach, Maine. My fascination with this particular aesthetic strengthened with more confidence over many years and solidified with language, context, and history when I studied painting at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. My particular method of making naturally evolved as I continued creating paintings in a variety of studios in all of the places I’ve lived. Currently, I’m in Silver Lake in a space where I’m able to live, work, and paint.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Most artists struggle in some way at some point. It’s important to know that just making the work is hard. You have to make time, make space, find community, deal with rejection, access opportunities to propel your work forward and find the resources to make what you want to make. There are so many obstacles that life will throw at you to discourage and distract you. I have experienced them all. It will likely not be a smooth road for anyone, but it is important work. I firmly believe that everyone is an artist and should make art. There’s a long list of reasons why I think this, but the biggest one is that it creates a mechanism to see yourself with more clarity. Seeing, examining, and knowing yourself can be an additional challenge that some may struggle with, but trust me, it’s one of the most valuable and rewarding things you can do for yourself.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My paintings are abstract and are composed of hundreds, sometimes thousands of tiny painted dots and dashes that accumulate to form geometric fields of color. Handwritten letters, aged photos, and other physical memory markers create a landscape of shapes and borders for pointillist color marks to flow in, around, and on top of. My paintings operate like quilts or puzzles; many small pieces make up the whole. These pieces are cut, torn, and then fastened together by carefully placed painted marks.
I work with the rhythm of the breath, repetition, human error, and the limitations of a body trying to replicate the same mark over and over– building, stacking, and burying the material beneath. Like the power of the breath, this meditative method of art-making examines present thoughts and lingering memories– challenging how we perceive and respond to what was, is, and can be.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Reach out via my website or Instagram.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kevinjlucey.com
- Instagram: @kevinjlucey
