words from the artist
My work is a response to living—a way to process consciousness and probe the inner lives of myself and others. I begin intuitively, channeling the subconscious through abstract forms, allowing imagery to surface organically. From this starting point, I draw representational figures out of abstraction, grounding them in familiar anatomy while subtly distorting or reshaping it to suggest movement or transformation.
My current body of work consists of mixed media drawings in colored pencil and gouache. These materials allow for a layered process that mirrors the emotional and psychological layers I explore. Themes of nature, vulnerability, and the quiet complexities of human existence guide my practice. While the meaning behind each piece often becomes clear to me far after its completion, viewers frequently note a dark, mystical quality—sometimes tinged with a wry, unsettling humor. I embrace this tension, seeking to depict an inner world that is both exposed and enigmatic.
Publication from Solo Exhibition at Anita S. Wooten Gallery, Curated by Carlye Frank
What does it mean to look at a painting? At a body?
Much has been made of the role of the gaze in art- in its production, and in the experience of looking at it. Theresa Lucey offers us a gaze that is unflinching. Her figures- largely female, nude or nearly so- present themselves to us as variously coiled in tension, literally pressed down by the weight of domestic objects. A pair of lovers lock in an embrace of knotted limbs.
These paintings are distinctly uncomfortable, even when the figures seem to be at rest. In fact, the figures seem most natural when they are slumped in exhaustion. These figures, when they return our gaze, do as an act of accusation, implicating the viewer as an agent in their exhaustion.
Lucey exploits the acidic, bleaching effects of refracted digital blue light. The way we look at each other, mediated by screens, becomes the way we look at ourselves, and are looked at by others.
That which can be looked at also looks back at us. Lucey forces us to a reckoning with the gazing object. We are simultaneously its consuming voyeur, and the subject of its voyeuristic gaze.
-Carlye Frank
January, 2020