These paintings portray moments of psychological and emotional impact inspired by mythological figures and events and by the experiences of my own life. I also draw from Titian and Rubens, for their own treatment of themes from Metamorphoses, their emotive figuration and surface qualities: layered oils in rich colours, sweeping brushstrokes that bring a dynamic to the image and natural settings to cohere with the timelessness of the subject matter.

Around fifteen paintings will fill the walls of the gallery, inhabited by mythological figures moving through woodlands. Their identities – god, beast, human – are unfixed and change from canvas to canvas. At play are the relationships between male and female, dark and light, drama and calm. My hope is to invite the viewer into a subconscious space where their own experience and associations connect with the abstract sensations of paint.

Lucy Threlfall is a painter based in north Hertfordshire. Her practice encompasses both commissioned portraits and large gestural landscape-based oil paintings that fuse observations of nature with imagination and memory. Scenes of woods and skies, developed from sketches made outside, become stage sets for figures and storylines that she sees within the fabric of natural forms. Her work is informed both by a degree in Art History and a more recent MA in printmaking: recent work explores her own imaginative response to classical narratives – in particular the theme of metamorphosis and how it plays out in the tension between male and female.
Lucy has recently exhibited with AKA Fine Art in Cambridge and Moorwood Fine Art in Somerset. Past exhibitions include the Royal Society of Portraits Painters in 2003, Christie’s in 2005 with the Garrick Milne prize and Wells Art Contemporary in 2019. In 2021 she was a semi-finalist in Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year.