Some of my Lies are True - Lucy Turner

Lucy Turner has been teaching the art of printing at the Duncairn for a number of years, sharing the amazing technique of lino print and giving her inspired guidance to many of you.

2024 has been bringing new inspiration to Lucy and expanding the horizons. As she is of our most loved artists and facilitators, we want to know more and we asked her to share what’s new with you.

What is happening in your career at the moment?

2024 is a new start creatively for me. I’m hoping to reboot my printmaking practise by joining Belfast Print Workshop and brushing up on some skills also heading to the States for a month long self-arranged residency in New York. This time will give me the opportunity to make new work in book format using etched brass. There are a couple of museum exhibitions that I want to visit including at PS1 Leslie Martinez’s cosmic palette based on CMYK, which has always been of interest to me, the artist also sprays and stains canvases with diluted paint, and then folds, pools, and collages materials onto the surface—including rags and dried acrylics.

You’ve been an artist for a while now, but you haven’t stopped growing. Why is it important as an artist to continuously evolve? 

Process has always underpinned my practise I have always considered PRINT to be like a game of chess, consisting of a series of commands or operations to convert the original idea, such as a photo or sketch, into a printing plate or other image carrier.

You need to be ahead of the game.

Where do you keep finding the inspiration to grow and to create?

Inspiration comes easy through my work as artist in residence in HMP Maghaberry where ‘the scales’ of fact truth and human emotion often clash. 

I currently am making a series of prints called ‘Some of my Lies are True’ inspired by the complex interpretations of reality - within a peopled environment, how a set of facts can become blurred through open discussion. The construction of actuality in our contemporary society, where truths are malleable, and illusions linger on the edge of our consciousness. 

In the work I do layers of paint are meticulously applied and removed, merging figures, landscapes, and objects are reoccurring, these motifs are hand printed on recycled Irish linen.