That Would Have Been Wonderful Painting

Kevin Lucey’s abstract paintings are composed of hundreds, sometimes thousands of tiny painted dots and dashes that accumulate to form geometric fields of color. Handwritten letters, aged photos, and other physical memory markers create a landscape of shapes and borders for pointillist color marks to flow in, around, and on top of. Lucey’s paintings operate like quilts or puzzles; many small pieces make up the whole. These pieces are cut, torn, and then fastened together by carefully placed painted marks. Lucey works with the rhythm of the breath, repetition, human error, and the limitations of a body trying to replicate the same mark over and over– building, stacking, and burying the material beneath. Like the power of the breath, this meditative method of art-making examines present thoughts and lingering memories– challenging how we perceive and respond to what was, is, and can be. Growing up in New Hampshire, then Boston’s North Shore, and finally to the West Coast (Oakland, and now Los Angeles), Lucey takes inspiration from the places he’s lived and the people he connects with– like the patterns made by footprints in blankets of snow, names written in desert sand, the gesture of words given as gifts, queerness, and the limitlessness of love.