w: victorialucyillustration.com
e: victorialucyillustration@gmail.com
Victoria is a British born illustrator based in Cornwall, UK. Graduating from Southampton Solent in 2008 where she took a BA in Fine Art and later in life studying at Falmouth University in Cornwall where she was awarded a first class honours with distinction in Art, MA Illustration: Authorial Practice during 2018 from Falmouth University.
My creative practice revolves around my passion and keen interest for the natural world and the inhabitants. More recently I have been investigating the narratives around eco fables and folktales to see how they can be retold to encompass modern day challenges and challenge our attitudes to the natural world.
"The world is feeling, knowing, thinking itself through the beings that compose it.” - Vinciane Despret
I am interested in our biophilic connection to the more than human world, interconnectedness through being, making, storytelling and imagining. Imagining umwelt, imagining the life of another, imagining what it is like to be them and what they are connected with. Does storytelling have the ability to ensoul beings or living systems and make us fall in love with the world? In this age of the Anthropocene and the sixth mass extinction, I think telling stories about others and ourselves is very important, thinking about the webbed ecologies that we are apart of, what kind of new narratives can we as a species/interspecies create together? Illuminating one another, invisible and visible systems.
Edward O. Wilson theorises in his book ‘The Biophilia Hypothesis’ that it is unlikely that mankind can be severed from its original animal human relations. Wilson puts forwards the theory of gene culture coevolution that occurred through the evolutionary time of deep history. Repetitive exposure to potential threats causing emotional responses from animal visitations, these became weaved into story telling and metaphors.
For my MA I produced a book titled ‘Animal Islands’. Animal Islands is an illustrated poetry book that sees water personified.
In many cultures worldwide there exists stories in myth and folklore of watery beings, this story was inspired by an avenue of research that concluded with if we shift our perspectives to see life forces and phenomena from inanimate to animate, such as rivers and mountains, stones and air, we might interact with them differently as to what we have been doing.
I am interested in Folk stories, past and present, and how whether some have the capability to shift and change meaning with time. I mean to explore the narrative that exists between the stories and the landscape, seascape also along with the inhabitants of the land, water, and air.
A rewebbing, retelling of our ecologies, what stories is the nonhuman world telling us? A new augury is perhaps seen when we read the bodies of those washed up on beaches, filled with discarded plastics, the empty belly of a stricken albatross.
The animal body, water, landscape, seascape, myth, storytelling, folklore, magic, psyche, deeptime and ecopsychology. I am interested in the idea of being in the psyche, and the psyche in us. Animals entering into our psyche through dreams and everyday life as James Hillman and Margot McLean discuss in ‘Dream Animals’, as well as animals, other phenomena as discussed by Patrick Harpur in his book ‘Daimonic Reality’.
Looped in and around one another's lives, a metaphor for describing this could perhaps be water. All bioenergy life forms contain a certain amount of fluid, the fluid migrates around the body. When dying, this fluid leaves the body. Therefore, I see it as we are watery bodies migrating through existence over and over again, transient lamina forms. When we eat we absorb nutrients, into our microbiome, when we die these nutrients are passed on elsewhere. It is a cycle of webbed ecologies living and dying together, what remains are our stories, these stories migrate through air, through time, this swirling force between earth and sky. Stories have a life of their own, growing and retracting, sometimes lying dormant, and sometimes going away. Some stories are potentially harmful to others, and other stories have the ability to illuminate spaces, beings, events overlooked, or the less known.
2016-2018 MA Illustration: Authorial Practice with Distinction, Falmouth University, Cornwall
2015 PADI Divemaster Internship A three-month-long internship on the volcanic island of Lanzarote, the volcanicity of this island makes diving here a unique experience as it is full of blue holes and cathedral-like caves, an island truly rich in underwater life. Based in the South in Puerto del Carmen, Las Palmas, Spain. Here, I learned to dive, taught visitors new to diving about diving, human anatomy, local ecosystems, leading and guiding dives to adults and children, assisting in conservation tasks, exploring and drawing underwater shipwrecks, and wildlife underwater. Here, I logged over 100 dives and am confident in my knowledge of diving. I pledge to be an ongoing ambassador for Project Aware.
On the volcanic and geologically unique Atlantic ocean island of Lanzarote, I gained my professional certifications as PADI Divemaster, PADI Rescue Diver, PADI Night Diver, PADI Advanced Diver (Adventure diver)
Upon returning to the UK I continued my studies at Andark Diving School and passed my PADI Drysuit Diver.
2009 - 2016 Hampshire Countryside Service LOTC, Learning Outside the Classroom Outdoor Leader Award & Risk Management in the Outdoors. Outdoor education provider of workshops for children, schools, community, adults, and additional needs groups.
2013 - 2013 Eastleigh College Student of Glass Engraving Workshops led by the renowned glass engraver Tracey Sheppard
2006 - 2008 Southampton Solent University BA Fine Art
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS
Earth Patterns, 2021 Online Digital Gallery Exhibition.
Intertwine Our Branches, A Digital Exhibition On Climate Intersectionality. September 18th - October 18th 2020.
Imagine Falmouth, Falmouth Art Gallery 23rd November - 18th January 2020
The Cruel & Curious, National Trust Barns, Stowe Barton, Bude, Cornwall September 2019
On The Brink, Poetry & Illustration event surrounding the plight of the the Cornish Path Moss. Cornwall, February, 2019
Seeing Voices, Poetry & Illustration Collective Exhibition. Cornwall Poetry Festival, The Poly Arts Centre, Falmouth, Cornwall. November, 2018
Nexus, End Of Year MA Illustration: Authorial Practice Show. Falmouth School of Art, Cornwall, September, 2018
PUBLICATIONS
Q&A with Louder than the Storm ‘Discovering Life at the Margins’, to read the interview click here September 2020
Rural Slop: Subverting Notions of Contemporary Rural Art, Online Publication exhibiting submitted photographs www.slopprojects.com 12th June - Ongoing 2020 Click here for Issu feature.
A Suitcase full of Eels, Guillemot Press 2018. Eel illustration submitted and published along with various many other illustrator artists exposing and exploring the plight of the critically endangered European eel. For more information please visit http://www.eels.cargocollective.com/
The New Manifesto, Zine, 2018. An exciting and beautifully made zine. My manifesto was printed along with ‘Email to the Editor’. Please visit Alex’s website if you would like to know more. http://www.alexandrabildsoe.com/
Mouth, Atlantic Press official publication of the 2018 MA Authorial Practice Illustration Forum. A collection of poetry and imagery responding to the word ‘mouth’. My poem ‘The Eel’ and brush pen eel drawings. March 2018
WORKSHOPS & WORKING GROUPS
Make Your Own Zine Workshop A workshop delivered by Sarah Batchelor and myself, Summer 2019 at Treehouse Newquay, Play & Arts www.sarahbatchelor.co.uk
Working Groups & Regenerative Community Actions, Environmental Activist against Climate Degradation Action group: Extinction Rebellion Falmouth & Penryn. February 2020 Action. Opposing certain banks which continue to remain investing in fossil fuels.