Martyn Lucas

About the Artist 

Martyn Lucas is a freelance artist, curator and educator, and in addition to his painting practice, works on projects with artists and communities in Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire.  Since graduating in Fine Art from Reading University, he has exhibited across the UK, in Canada and the USA. He has curated a wide range of gallery and public art projects, and for ten years managed the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh.

Martyn’s recent practice has returned to landscape, and the use of watercolour, pastel and collage.  Works are derived from painting on site, from sketchbook images and photographs. The Pennines, the Dales, Lake District and Scottish Borders have provided starting points.  The ‘Difficulty of Landscape’ series includes visual disruptions to the scene. They are about painting as much as place; about the qualities of mark making, light and composition as much as depicting land and sky. They are about the process of looking, of finding a ‘view’, but also glimpsing an obscured landscape through a train or car window, or the changing clouds beyond some roof tops.  There is a tension between the traditional ‘sublime’ and a modern-day sense of transformation of landscape through human activity.

SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS

2018 Curator of Truth & Fantasy for Art Unpacked, Chrysalis Arts

2017 Co-curator and artist, Intimate, Isherwood Gallery, Wigan

2017 Summer exhibition, Silson Contemporary, Harrogate

2017 Cross Street Arts, The Atkinson, Southport

2017 West Lancashire Open Exhibition at Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk

2017 Curator of Committed to Print, Cooper Gallery, Barnsley

2016 VS, New Art Spaces, Bolton

2015 Warrington Contemporary Open