The Birds Have Landed

A tinta-da-china e os marcadores são o material de eleição de Lucy McLauchlan.

Considera que a utilização de tintas permanentes, impossíveis de apagar e corrigir, é uma mais-valia para o seu trabalho: “If I make a mistake I can’t remove it; often though, the accidental details become my favourite”

Lucy combina arte deco, com motivos psicadélicos e infantis de onde resultam obras delicadas, mas ainda assim com o seu quê de provocação.

O seu trabalho já correu mundo. Desde o Victoria and Albert Museum em Londres, à Ecletic Gallery em Tóquio, passando por murais ao melhor estilo street art.

O seu último trabalho foi aliás desenvolvido para o FAME Fest, em Itália, em que Lucy "adornou" uma antiga torre de electricidade, agora ocupada por pombos.

"The birds have landed"

Fiquem também com um excerto de uma entrevista, disponível no seu site e com mais alguns trabalhos.

When did you first realise art was your thing? Were you always scribbling as a child?

I always had a pen in my hand. i think everyone should enjoy painting and drawing and not just during childhood.

You use permanent materials, eg Indian ink and marker pens - are you perpetually surrounded by scrunched up bits of drawings that have gone wrong?

Using permanent materials presents a challenge, the mistakes often turn into my favourite details within a piece.

How did you come to use marker pens etc?

I used marker pens as they were cheap and dried quickly, but attempting large scale work in such a medium caused me to suffer from chronic RSI. Fellow Brummie Will Barras suggested that I invest in some good quality paint brushes - which changed my entire working practice.

Describe your art in three words. If that’s impossible, I’ll take a sentence!

Improvised fluid mark-making.

What’s Beat 13?

Myself and Matt Watkins set up Beat13 in 1999 as a website to organise ourselves and friends in an independent manner. We created various projects, exhibitions, comics, screen-prints…all involving friends and acquaintances. Eventually we opened a gallery space in Birmingham.

Many of your prints are single colour/monochrome. Do you hate colour?

I enjoy concentrating on the line work, sometimes colour is distracting - i use it occasionally but find the tones already existing on the surfaces of the found objects i use more interesting.

What’s your favourite personal artwork?

The short film TACIT documents me creating an installation from the local debris dumped in Walsall. Matt Watkins and I made the soundtrack using techniques inspried by John Cage ’s chance music reflecting my own working process. You can watch it online.

The big names in street/urban art these days are overwhelmingly male - at least in the mainstream. Is it a macho environment? Why? Where are all the women?

It’s not a new situation for women to be disproportionately represented in the art world. New York’s Guerilla Girls produce poster art that hi-lights the situation.