New editions
Duck Feather Blue and
Softest Cinnamon see Lucie Bennett use a calm and tranquil colour palette to present female figures in subdued and relaxed poses, hand drawn in the minimal, linear style she is best known for. Read more about the new screenprints below.
It’s hard to believe it was two years ago we released our last two screenprint editions with
Lucie Bennett, ‘Ring-a-Zing-Zing’ and ‘Electric Dreams’. Since then, Lucie has been exploring other mediums such as laser cut acrylic - which saw the release of
Candy Stripe and
Tutti Frutti in 2014 - and earlier this year, neon, in the form of the impressive pink
Romy In Lights and the blue
Marianne In Lights.
So we’re excited to be introducing two brand new screenprints today by the artist, Duck Feather Blue and Softest Cinnamon. Cool, slick and sophisticated, the new works are a contrast to ‘Ring-a-Zing-Zing’ and ‘Electric Dreams’, which saw Lucie present her female subjects in sexy, sassy poses using bright, vibrant, almost florescent colours. In the new editions, Lucie’s women are more subdued; their postures introverted. In Duck Feather Blue, the figure stands with her head down and her arms relaxed in front of her; in Softest Cinnamon, again the subject’s gaze is averted as she glances down over her left shoulder, and this time she sits in a guarded manor with her arms wrapped around her legs.
To reiterate this peaceful sense of the line illustrations, which Lucie drew by hand onto the true grain sheets that were then made into the screens for printing, the chosen palette for these works is calm and tranquil. Lucie’s work is so simple that colour plays a major part - arguably as much as a part as the image itself - and she gives this element her full attention, often spending some time mixing the colour until it’s exactly right. And the shades Lucie had previously selected for
Duck Feather Blue and
Softest Cinnamon (she arrived with painted colour swatches she’d blended in her studio) were particularly difficult to mix, and one morning at the print studio, Lucie spent three hours with printer Joss working on various attempts to get the exact required tone of the pale aqua-turquoise for the background colour in
Duck Feather Blue. It was clearly worth it though and the reason Lucie is such a perfectionist is because she intends for the colour to have equally as much of an impact as the image, and therefore if it’s not exactly right, it won’t give off the required message.
In terms of her editions, this serene and harmonious approach is something of a new departure for Lucie. All of her editions since 2012 have seen her use bold, often primary or neon colours with her female subjects taking up more extroverted positions. Recent original paintings, however, such as the beautiful
Seated Nude Waiting,
Green Reclining Nude, and
Morning Light (not available), saw the introduction to this more subdued way of working, and lead the way to the editions.
These works are like a breath of fresh air; through the carefully selected colour palettes effortlessly working with the images, Lucie succeeds in making the viewer subconsciously experience something when in the presence of her work. And this perhaps is why it is so popular and widely collected.
Duck Feather Blue and
Softest Cinnamon are available from £815.00 each. See them along with other available work by the artist,
here.