Luci Eyers
Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you?
I’m not sure I can narrow it down to one woman, so I will start with Gwen John who I admire for the economy and fragility of line in her drawings. Looking at her work reminds me that it can be effective to keep things simple and pared down. A very different artist whose work I love is Nicole Eisenman. Her work is filled with inventiveness, humour and wide ranging references.
Historically the artist I am curious about is Antonia Uccello, Paolo Uccello’s daughter, who Vasari said “knew how to draw” but none of her work is known to exist. I’d love to see her drawings.
Two contemporary women artists who I have been lucky enough to work with and whose approach I find inspirational are Cathy Lomax, who is multi faceted in her involvement with the art world - as well as being an artist she works across media as a publisher, writer and gallerist creating platforms to support and show other artists; and Anne Ryan, an artist but also a generous and insightful teacher and mentor.
Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?
Whilst women artists appear to be increasingly visible in contemporary venues there is still a huge imbalance historically. Although the National Gallery has recently acquired a powerful self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi as St. Catherine of Alexandria (a scholarly woman who outwitted the leading philosophers of the time), it is still one of only 21 paintings the NG owns (they have borrowed a further 4) which are by women out of their collection of over 2,300 artworks.
All-women shows can be useful and interesting but it isn’t the only way forward. I am a mother of three sons, so I live in a house with four men, and this no doubt influences my non-combative approach which is to find common ground and proceed with sensitivity and respect for differences.
When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?
I didn’t come from a creative family but I was lucky to have both a good art teacher at school and an inspiring art history teacher. I drew in any spare moments I had from around the age of fifteen. I went straight to the Slade from school and so it took me a while to work out what I wanted to paint and to have the language to talk about it. It took me even longer to work out why art matters.
What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)
Drawing is central to my work. I keep a small sketch book and pencil with me always: from one end I set down very sketchy initial ideas which are really memory prompts; from the other end I record notes from exhibitions I see or quotes from books I am reading or from conversations and talks I listen to. I paint from my mind’s eye, often working in series. I usually paint either lots of small pieces that can build to a constellation or work multiple mini narratives into a larger compositional framework. The work is improvisational and I am continually responding to what is already there. I might have an overarching intention or aim for the work but the specifics are invented in the moment. I don’t quite know what direction the painting will move in during the day. I find this slight sense of uncertainty or surprise keeps me on my toes. As the work develops I slow down and take time over the decisions about balance, focus and resolution which can happen over months.
What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends? Literature?)
Narrowing this down I will briefly answer a couple of these. I spend time on the South Coast of the UK in a small seaside village called Pagham. One of my real pleasures is walking along the shingle beach and picking up things (like eggcases for rays and catsharks) and watching the migrating wader birds. I also love urban green spaces and observing the sheer survival of plants growing out of concrete and the disinterested coexistence between us and squirrels, pigeons and garden birds. The painting I return to most is a strange one in the Ashmolean, Oxford – The Forest Fire by Piero di Cosimo. It is teeming with animals escaping, spontaneously combusting fires uncontrollable by humans. Piero painted from his imagination but also from memorizing things he had closely observed. The details are beautiful in their shape, specificity and liveliness. There are little mini scenes, some rendered as silhouette against light background landscape. The painting is full but also successful as a whole, it is also very humane.
Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist?
There is a wonderful recent book about the drawings of Santiago Ramon y Cajal called The Beautiful Brain. Cajal is thought of as the grandfather of neuroscience. He drew as an adolescent but chose a scientific career. Cajal used a microscope to look at neural cells and networks at a time when it was not possible to photograph one’s findings because there was not enough light passing through the microscope to be able to use photography. He had to draw to visualize his research. By drawing he didn’t record exactly what he saw but what he inferred from close and repeated observation. So although the drawings are incredibly beautiful in themselves they are also fascinating scientifically. I like the way looking and drawing can be seen to be so valuable as part of a process that is not art-related.
One negative thing I have found out about Cajal is in his book “Advice for a Young Investigator” when he advises young scientists not to marry artists because they are too unreliable and distracting – to give some context this was written in the late C19th.
My art pick would be “The World New Made” by the artist and writer Timothy Hyman. His rewriting of C20th art focuses on figurative painting and moves beyond the usual canon.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging?
Not to worry whether or not your work is on trend. Things come and go and there is little point in making work like everyone else.
Website: www.lucieyers.org.uk
Instagram: @lucieyerspainting
