We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lucy Dickens a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Lucy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
As the daughter of a watercolor artist and a photographer, my parents instilled in me a passion for the arts and the great outdoors from an early age. It was back then I developed a sharp eye and zeal for the outdoors.
I loved watching my mother paint, who was the first person to encourage and inspire me to create. Luckily, my family—avid outdoor explorers—enjoyed backpacking and camping their way through some of the most unspoiled terrains unseen by many. I was inspired to create and began sketching my experiences.
Then as an aspiring artist, I found myself studying everything, the way the sunlight struck the mountain ridges and sparkled across the water, the way the clouds formed and the setting sun bathed everything in warm light. My first mediums were charcoal and pencil.
These talents of my parents were not their primary professions. Maybe because of that I never considered being an artist as a career path for me until years later.
As a young adult, I worked in banking, investing, and then my husband, Richard, and I (my high school sweetheart), started a demolition company, which would become the largest in the state. Yes, we create and destroy!
Working full-time as their company’s controller, and helping to raise two children, is where all my time was concentrated until we moved into a new home in 2004. It was then that I wanted to paint a mural on the bedroom wall. To practice, Richard, brought home a piece of scrap drywall from our business. I opened some simple craft paint and my unrealized talents began to spill out.
Before long, I had created a tropical oasis and just as importantly, my heart began to open with excitement! There was really something here, although it needed much refining.
I then began painting with professional acrylic paints. The reemergence of my artistic talents meant I would step away from the business and focus solely on family and painting.
From the first time I put brush to canvas, I knew this is what I was supposed to be doing! This is who I am! I don’t know exactly where it will take me, I just knows I must paint. This is my calling.
Lucy, 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?
The elements in the environment—every leaf, animal, cloud—they, without question bend gently toward the light. So do I. It’s with this notion I strive to bring these spectacular scenes in nature to canvas.
I am so much a part of my paintings, that the paintbrush is more or less an extension of my heart and mind. And this collaboration of the elements, me included, combines to transform a simple piece of canvas into an experience to share.
This is my intention; to take in phenomenal scenes and express my gratitude for being part of it by painting landscapes, florals, and wildlife from around the world. I am merely a part of it. All this is the expression of love and beauty given to us by our creator and I’m honored to be able to paint His creation. When I began to explore my talents, I was, well, a blank canvas ready to be transformed.
To develop my work, the steps I took began before I knew I was taking them. As my gift of painting unfolded over the years, I switched to oil painting and studied great masters, especially the Hudson River Valley painters, such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church. The way they handled the atmosphere and light, a sense of the divine, draws me deeply and influences my work today.
The classes and instruction at the Scottsdale Artists’ School, and other one on one instruction, including the guidance of Jason Horejs, of Xanadu Gallery, brought my work that much further, including embracing the fundamentals of the art business.
Another component that makes me unique is the experience I share with each painting. Whether I’ve traveled halfway across the world or just outside my front door, I’m not only looking at every scene as a potential painting, but I’m stepping into the adventure and bringing back with me the thoughts, feelings, and experiences to share with others.
They say ‘every picture tells a story,’ and I’m sharing this journey hoping to bring viewers along with me. I want them to become engaged and find the same joy in the moment I did when I first experienced it. I create a written “story” to accompany each painting.
Being able to gaze into a scene and renew and recharge from it, and then bring it to someone else is a gift from God I don’t take for granted.
The enjoyment of painting, sharing, and storytelling is endless! Whether through art shows, representation, events, or publications; to know that my work can land in front of so many eyes and engage the spirit of viewers means my work is not just for me. Each brushstroke is for someone else. Each story is me sharing the experience with them.
My original oil paintings and their stories are collected throughout the US and abroad. I also make much of my work available to a wider audience by recreating many of my pieces through high quality Giclée prints—a technique for fine art reproduction to make high quality archive prints. This gives me the opportunity to bring joy to more people.
Original artwork is special and yet not everyone can have the original. I want to reach others who are moved by my art and stories and I feel strongly that I must, in some quality way, make my art available beyond those who can purchase an original.
I am a host studio for the Hidden in the Hills Artist Studio Tour each November at my gallery and studio in Carefree, Arizona. I am also represented by Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. I am thankful and blessed to have received numerous awards and publications.
My work has been featured at various events including: Oil Painters of America Exhibitions, National Oil and Acrylic Painters, International Guild of Realism, American Women Artists, Cave Creek Museum (featured artist). I also was invited to exhibit my safari collection at the Phoenix Zoo’s Art on the Wild Side.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Us creatives must create, it is in our blood. When we don’t we become stifled. We have been blessed with a talent and we give thanks for that talent when we share it with the world. I believe I am to be a bringer of beauty and light in a dark world. Us artists pour everything into our work, hours upon hours creating, agonizing, studying, learning. Then there is the business side of art which, too, can be all consuming.
It can be tough to find balance and make a living as an artist. At time this pursuit consumes us, our thoughts, our heart and soul poured out. What would the world be without the arts, without creating something wonderful from nothing, that song which wrenches your heart, the dance performed with it, brushstrokes on a canvas, the caress of an exquisite sculpture? The list goes on and on.
The fight to succeed as an artist becomes more and more difficult as the demand for instant gratification for pennies increases. With the push of a button products are delivered to your door. I fall guilty of it myself. Fight the urge, buy local, buy from artists, buy original work from galleries. Surround yourself with beauty. I have a sign in my studio I look at often:
When you buy something from an artist, you are buying more than an object. You are buying hundreds of hours of errors and experimentation and moments of pure joy. You are not buying a thing, you are buying a piece of art, a piece of a soul…a small piece of someone’s life.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I mentioned before I love to bring joy to another, this includes capturing memories and experiencing wonder.
I love to see the reaction when someone is truly impacted by one of my paintings or when they are deeply encouraged by my writings that accompany them. I am prayerful over each of my paintings while creating and over who will collect them. I don’t know who it is meant for, but they do when they see it. It’s such a beautiful thing to witness this come together. I am so thankful to play a part in it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lucydickensfineart.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucydickens.fineart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LucyDickensFineArt
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lucydickensfineart3442/videos
- Other: Here is the link to my book, Through the Fire, Traveling the Broken Road to Hope and Healing! It’s my own personal journey through brokenness, finding hope and healing! https://www.lucydickensauthor.com/ Imagine what it would be like to walk in freedom, to break through past pain and trauma, to become whole and healed? What if your broken marriage could find strength for tomorrow, hope and healing like never before?
Image Credits
I have the rights to all images.