Lucy Pulvers RI

Statement

Lucy was born in Kyoto, Japan and grew up in both Tokyo and Kyoto with her two older sisters, also artists, and her older brother. She was educated in Japanese schools until she moved to Sydney in 2001 and is bilingual and bicultural in Japanese and English. In 2014 Lucy was awarded the Thea Proctor Scholarship by the Julian Ashton Art School. Lucy paints in both oil and watercolour. Lucy recently spent a year in the UK and travelled in Europe, particularly spending time in Germany. This was an intense period of looking at art, as well as painting and drawing while living in London. Every year since 2019, watercolour paintings by Lucy have been selected for inclusion in the annual Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours exhibit in London. In the 2020 watercolour exhibition, a self-portrait was awarded the ‘President’s Choice Award’. In 2024, Lucy received the 'Anthony J Lester Art Critic Award'.

In April 2025, Lucy was elected to be a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.

Lucy exhibits regularly and has been a finalist twice in the Portia Geach Portraiture Prize, a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize, a semi-finalist in the BP Portraiture Prize in London and most recently, a finalist in the Blake Prize.

Lucy is essentially a figure painter and portrait artist. All of her artistic work is rooted in her relationship to line and drawing as the foundation of her paintings, both in watercolour and oils. 

Lucy’s paintings are all, in essence an exploration of the inner emotional life of human beings. Lucy uses geometry, strong colour and bold lines to give her works an emotional power. These elements of colour and line are woven together to synthesise a surface world which captures a moment in the inner life of the figure portrayed. Japanese aesthetic culture has had a major impact on Lucy's work as she spent her childhood there and began to develop as an artist in Japan. In many traditional Japanese portraits, the face and hands are the elements that give expression to the inner life of the figure. The clothing of the figure, however, is often full of volume, geometry, colours and symbols which tell the story of the figure. Lucy is also fascinated by Kabuki and Noh theatre, where emotional climaxes in the drama are often expressed in frozen moments. The ‘mie’ in Kabuki is when the actor poses motionless but with extreme energy, bathed in dramatic lighting so the whole theatre holds its breath in the moment.

More recently, Lucy's long-standing fascination with Greek and Roman mythology has developed into a theme for a series of new works. Lucy is also now consistently producing larger works in oil on linen. Lucy is enjoying being able to express herself in much larger compositions.

Lucy studied classical voice and piano as a child, and music is also a very important influence on her work. Like music, Lucy’s work is an emotional expression rather than a didactic statement, with the emotional quality expressed through colour, line and form.