Lucy Pratt was born in Oxfordshire in 1970 and raised in a highly creative family of painters and studio potters. She went on to study at Banbury School of Art, Loughborough School of Art and Cheltenham School of Art, before travelling extensively to sketch and paint in India, Nepal, Thailand, and Sumatra. Those early works yielded Solo Exhibitions in the UK and America, beginning when Lucy was just 22 years of age.
Her paintings have been selected for four Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions to date, and are held in the corporate collections of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Robertson Collection, the European Marketing Board London, the Oaks Collection, the Paintings in Hospitals Collection, the European Portugal Group, the Tresco Estate Art Collection, the Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Sculpture Park in Mount Vernon USA, and private collections in the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, and the United States.
2024 From the Bosphorus to the Ganges, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2022 A Moment in Colour, One Year Artist Residency Exhibition at National Trust Upton
House & Gardens, Banbury, Warwickshire
2022 Tresco Art Residency and Exhibition at Gallery Tresco, Isles of Scilly
2022 Postcards Home, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2020 Clock Off, Clarendon Fine Art, London 2020 20/20 Vision, Clarendon Fine Art, London
2019 Kitchen Orchids, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2019 Under the Big Blue Canopy, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2019 Seduced by Colour, Clarendon Fine Art, London
2019 Russell Gallery, Putney, London
2018 Spring Sorbet, Clarendon Fine Art, London
2017 Power Up, Clarendon Fine Art, London
2016 The Italian Job, Clarendon Fine Art, London
2016 All Around Me, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2016 Russell Gallery, Putney, London
2014 New York, London & My Kitchen, Clarendon Fine Art, London
2014 Fun on the Rivieras, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2013 Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2013 From the Land to the Sea, Russell Gallery, Putney, London
2012 Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2010 Island Life, Russell Gallery, Putney, London
2009 Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2008 Coves Quay Gallery, Salcombe, Devon
2007 Tresco Art Residency and Exhibition at Gallery Tresco, Isles of Scilly
2007 Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
2006 Coves Quay Gallery, Salcombe, Devon
2005 Ainscough Contemporary Art, Chelsea, London
2004 Coves Quay Gallery, Salcombe, Devon
2003 Ainscough Contemporary Art, Chelsea, London
2002 Ainscough Contemporary Art, Chelsea, London
2002 Coves Quay Gallery, Salcombe, Devon
2001 Ainscough Contemporary Art, Chelsea, London
2000 Ainscough Contemporary Art, Chelsea, London
1999 Moreton Street Gallery, Pimlico, London
1998 Adamson Miller Boone, Atlanta, USA
1998 Moreton Street Gallery, Pimlico, London
1993 Recent Travels, John Davies Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
1992 John Davies Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
Lucy has also taken part in mixed exhibitions at John Davies Gallery, Bonhams London, Mall Galleries London, Albany Gallery Cardiff, Josie Eastwood Gallery Hampshire, Panter and Hall London, The Royal College of Art London, Wren Gallery Gloucestershire, Cork Street London, Cricket Fine Art Hampshire, Catto Gallery London, Lagerquist Gallery Atlanta USA, Kokusai Bijutsu ShingiKai International Art Exchange Japan, and Guilin China Municipal Art Museum.
“Lucy imbues each painting with her wonderful spirit and individuality which bursts off the canvas, and it is impossible not to be moved by her work. Her painting is joyful and life affirming. She captures all of life’s wonders and joys, played out for us under the big blue sky”.
Under the Big Blue Canopy is Lucy’s sixth one woman show at the Fosse, an enduring relationship built on friendship and a shared artistic conviction. There are plenty of familiar friends and places and all the things we have come to love about Lucy’s painting, but there are also new horizons and characters for us to revel in. Lucy’s panoramas of Rhoscolyn on Anglesey are startlingly bold and ambitious, with sweeping vistas bathed in brilliant blue and punctuated by little sail boats, dancing over white capped waves. Closer to home we meander with Lucy down hot Cotswold lanes, hedgerows bursting with flowers, the roads flanked by bucolic hills and rolling fields. We also see these same lanes in different seasons, Lucy’s palette turning from autumnal notes to a paler, wintry tone. All of Lucy’s landscapes are bathed in wonderful light and practically reverberate with colour.
“[Lucy’s] work, as seen to good effect in the last two years Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions, swashes and buckles. Lucy Pratt is moving well towards future motifs. As Auguste Renoir believed – ‘we are but corks bobbing along on the sea of life’”.
I feel that with Lucy Pratt’s work that location is not overly important. Her subject matter, composed in the timeless tradition, takes us into the universality of teeming life; on a journey of personal observation, through little tongues of pathfinding paint, flicking out before us. […] Lucy Pratt manages the elongated panoramas with consummate aplomb. […] With small but precise actions the viewers’ eyes whizz in and out, zigzagging with delight to the next ‘what are they up to?’ moment. […] Mostly, Pratt takes us to a world of the slow life in high summer, where children bomb and splash fearlessly into sea or lido. Even if it drizzles on the pier, the union flags raise a damp flutter and gulls are held on the lazy updrafts. Then, there are bays strewn with cottages, tranquil havens, reclaimed after daily incomers have been swept out on the ebb. Though I see Lucy Pratt’s work as stories in paint, they do not prate, nor seek to elucidate more than the bare bones. I like that.
“Lucy’s world on canvas is uncomplicated, and we gaze through a technicolour lens. The sun is shining, there is laughter, we take pleasure in the moment and feel the artist’s gregarious and positive nature emanate; for she is beautiful through and through”.
But don’t be fooled. Pratt is not seducing us either, taking us down the garden path of fluffy confection. Her message is defined and packs a punch, one we need to keep reminding ourselves of, especially in today’s world … how lucky we are and isn’t it good to be alive? Fun on the Rivieras is time well spent in the glamorous Portofino on the Italian Riviera, and time well spent this summer on the equally glamorous English Riviera. These paintings express all that we enjoy and love about Lucy’s paintings. Lucy, like so many formidable women artists before her and also of this generation, has succeeded in combining motherhood with a flourishing career. Her paintings are in private collections all over the world. She has been selected and hung in the RA Summer Exhibition many times and is now represented in Mayfair, as well as Stow on the Wold, proof enough that her particular and joyous vision of life will endure.
“Not the most arrant miserablist could be uncheered in front of a painting by Lucy Pratt. A real warmth comes off her canvases—they are jubilant works”.
All Around Me is Lucy’s fifth one-man show at the Fosse, and just because its predecessors enjoyed great popular success, one need not fear that it is simply more of the same. Familiar and favourite subjects and themes are here – Cornwall, Devon, the Isle of Wight of course – but there are also new settings, many close to home in the Cotswolds and, to my mind at least, there is a growing strength in the work. Without being in any way backward-looking, Lucy’s cows, horses and sheep in fields and orchards have something of the freshness of the plein air painters [of] the turn of the 20th century – Munnings even. And then those magnificently blooming borders with their poppies, irises and red – hot-pokers, […] there is a nod of homage in them to [Henri] Rousseau, a painter whom I know Lucy admires.
“On arriving [at Lucy’s studio] I was immediately aware I was in the presence of someone has an enormous zest for life. Almost as if there was no moment to lose. As I stood, I was surrounded by images of pure happiness and joy”.
[A] painting of a wedding, a few boats pulled up on the beach or a harbour scene – even a winter scene with skaters – they are all full of people going about their everyday lives – children playing, everyone enjoying themselves. Her palette, and the fervour with which Lucy has applied herself to each painting, shows a person whose cup of life is always more than half full and who has the ability to transpose those feelings onto canvas in a direct and uncomplicated manner. […] A generous application of paint with bright summery colours conveys the pure joy of each image and gives the work an almost sculptural effect, such is the strength of the work. […] Too often for the artist is it easy to overwork a painting and try and maximise its impact to the viewer. Here, the artist has done just enough to capture and complete her statement and to give it the impact it was designed to have.