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Robert Lucy

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  1. Old Growth Stump by Robert Lucy, Image 2.

    Robert Lucy

    Old Growth Stump, 1997

    Oil on linen

    32 x 26 in

Robert Lucy makes paintings that highlight the individuality of his subjects. “I’m trying to capture the specificity of each creature,” he told interviewer Caroline Kraus. “That’s my thing, I guess. It’s not any ear, it’s that ear.” Born in Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, in 1965, he began his art studies under the Imagist painter Ed Paschke and went on to complete both his BFA (1988) and MFA (1990) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While he was living in Chicago he often traveled to the coastal forests of Oregon where he found inspiration in the natural landscape. Between 1994 and 1998, Lucy painted at least four versions of the same forested area that appears in Old Growth Stump. The original stump is located in Oregon’s Ecola State Park. “I painted this stump many times,” he recalls. “It seems like a rocket ship from the past, sort of Planet of the Apes style.”

After meeting his current husband, the actor Chris Wells, Lucy moved to New York City where he and Wells founded The Secret City, an award-winning organization that celebrates the arts by creating community-focused events. Since 2013, he and Wells have lived as long-term artists-in-residence at the Byrdcliffe Artists Colony in Woodstock, NY. Lucy’s recent compositions tend to create a distinction between depictions of plants or landscapes - in which the subject fills the canvas - and portraits of people, objects, or animals, in which the subject is singled out against a nonrepresentational background patterned with bright, direct colors. His paintings have been exhibited across the United States, with solo exhibitions at galleries in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, MO.