We recently connected with Kevin Lucey and have shared our conversation below.

Kevin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Kevin Lucey and I’m an artist living and working in Los Angeles, California.

A bit about my work:

Kevin Lucey’s abstract paintings 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. Lucey’s 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.

Lucey works 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.

Growing up in New Hampshire, then Boston’s North Shore, and finally to the West Coast (Oakland, and now Los Angeles), Lucey takes inspiration from the places he’s lived and the people he connects with– like the patterns made by footprints in blankets of snow, names written in desert sand, the gesture of words given as gifts, queerness, and the limitlessness of love.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Understanding love, learning about love, processing, and visualizing love is a big goal in my creative journey. Everything seems to go back to that. I think it’s a lifelong endeavor and such a gift we can give to ourselves and share with others. A lot of what I learn about, experience, and process ends up in my paintings– sometimes with actual love letters, other text, found objects, and more. Love is the content of my work, but the process of painting (actually physically making the work) is more of a meditative experience where I give myself permission to slow down, breathe, and be in the present moment with whatever comes up for me. That meditative process of making work about something so rich and wonderfully confusing has been a really important pairing for many years now. I always leave my studio with questions and a curiosity to learn more.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There are two big rewards– the reward we give to ourselves and the reward we give to others:

The reward we give to ourselves is about taking time for ourselves to be alone, to process the world around us, to listen, to visualize the things we see in our minds, and so much more. Taking time to create anything is one of the best tools we can reach for in almost any scenario. It’s up there with breathwork, meditation, exercise, therapy, socializing, travel, etc.. It has so much potential to heal our minds, bodies, and hearts.

The other reward is about sharing and connecting with others. This kind of creative energy reverberates outwards endlessly in all directions if we allow it to. Whatever you’re learning out, experimenting in, challenged by, excited by, etc. has the power to help others in so many ways. That connection can be formed and celebrated for a moment or even create long-lasting friendships/communities.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kevinjlucey.com
• Instagram: @kevinjlucey