LUCY DU SAUTOY

British artist Lucy du Sautoy graduated from The Art Academy in London with a first-class Fine Art Diploma in 2015, the same year her painting Daydreaming was selected for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. In 2016 she completed The Art Academy’s Postgraduate Programme. In 2019 Lucy was voted Artist of the Year by Artists and Illustrators magazine and her winning painting was shown in the associated exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

Lucy’s oil paintings depict views of London, its architecture and green spaces, of rural gardens, the countryside and seaside, seen through misted-up windows (on buses and trains, in taxis and houses etc) in moments of daydreaming and distraction, usually with whimsical doodles such as smiley faces and hearts finger-drawn in the condensation on the glass, but sometimes with raindrops splashed across the pane outside.

“I have spent a lot of time in my life staring out of windows. For me it provides a space to lose track, to daydream and to remember. The window captures a special vision of the world – combining an external reality with our own internal experience of it,” Lucy explains.

With the window as her subject, Lucy sets out to explore the mechanics of painting and to record human experience. “I like to consider my paintings as contemplations of the changing surface of everyday window panes, acknowledging random moments in time and space helped by changes in weather, season and light.” At the same time, Lucy aims to convey “how our experience of gazing out of a window can be touched by memories, hopes, uncertainties and daydreams.”

Lucy works from photographs as her first point of reference. She manipulates them digitally by cropping, blurring areas to bring other details forward and altering colour saturations. Surface is important to Lucy and she wants the viewer to enjoy the painted medium as much as she does, so brush marks are often visible and layers of glazes obvious.

Lucy’s work is regularly exhibited in solo and group gallery shows, open exhibitions and at art fairs, including a solo show at Panter & Hall in London in 2023 (where she also had solo shows in 2021 and 2020), regular solo exhibitions at Jane Newbery Gallery (London) and group shows A Breath of Fresh Air at Byard Art (Cambridge), the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (London) and Arkley Fine Art’s summer show (Hitchin) and Best of British 2.0 at The Gallery Holt (Norfolk). Lucy’s work has been shown by Gala Fine Art at Battersea Affordable Art Fair several times since 2018 and at the annual London Art Fair since 2023. She took part in Gala Fine Art’s group exhibition Escape into Colour in London in May 2021. In 2019 Lucy’s paintings toured to art fairs in New York and Hong Kong. In 2018 Lucy’s work was selected for a group show at The Stratford Gallery (Cotswolds), as well as for their Christmas exhibition.

Lucy frequently creates work for private clients and welcomes new commissions. Her paintings are held in private and corporate collections across the UK and in the US.