Martyn Lucas

Martyn Lucas is a freelance artist, curator and educator, and in addition to his painting practice, works on projects with artists and communities in Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Since graduating in Fine Art from Reading University, he has exhibited across the UK, in Canada and the USA. He has curated a wide range of gallery and public art projects, and for ten years managed the Turnpike Gallery, Leigh.

Martyn’s recent practice has returned to landscape, and the use of watercolour, pastel and collage. Works are derived from painting on site, from sketchbook images and photographs, and memories of regular travel through English landscapes. The Pennines, Yorkshire Dales, Lake District and Scottish Borders have provided starting points. The ‘Difficulty of Landscape’ series includes visual disruptions to the scene. They are about painting as much as place; about the qualities of mark making, light and composition as much as depicting land and sky. They are about the process of looking, of finding a ‘view’, but also glimpsing an obscured landscape through a train or car window, or the changing clouds beyond some roof tops. There is a tension between the traditional ‘sublime’ and a modern-day sense of transformat...

MA University of London
Post-graduate residency at Banff Centre for the Arts
BA University of Reading

Martyn has exhibited widely since being in the Whitworth Young Contemporaries in 1985. Recent exhibitions include:
2020 New Light Prize, Scarborough and touring
2019 Saul Hay Gallery, Manchester
2019 'The Fire Within', Wigan
2018 PS Mirabel, Manchester
2017 'Intimate', Isherwood Gallery, Wigan
2017 Silson Contemporary, Harrogate
2017 Cross Street Arts, The Atkinson, Southport
2017 Lancashire Open, Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk