Lucy Gray | Sculptor & Master Gilder

Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting Lucy Gray at her home and studio in Argyll, Scotland.

Known for her large-scale renditions of molluscs and birds of prey. Gray takes recognisable forms from the natural world and turns them into ornamental works of art. Using a mix of materials, Gray's sculpture is both an embodiment of nature's beauty and the artist's own self, manifesting ideas, feelings and even traumas.

In this short video, Lucy Gray talks about gilding - where she learnt and trained as a gilder and how she applies this to her practice.

The works featured at the end of the video - 'Sugar', 'Espresso', 'Liquorice' and 'Umami' - aside from showcasing Gray's use of gilding, are from a series of sculptures that explore the sensory experience of taste. Read on to discover more.........

As Gray puts it, shells are her 'vehicle' for expression. 'Sugar', a giant white and gold shell is amongst a series of works that attempt to visualise 'taste'. After contracting Covid four years ago, Gray lost her sense of taste and is only now rediscovering it. Bringing into visual from the indulgent quality of a candied sweet, 'Sugar' with its gilded interior excites and delights. 'Liquorice' and 'Espresso' also characterise their respective flavours in the most beautiful and visceral way ‘Liquorice’ - made primarily from a piece of charred wood that the artist found in a nearby glen - appropriates the jet black and sticky-sweet quality of its namesake. Whilst ‘Espresso’, burnished with caramel bubbles alludes to the foam that gathers at the top of a luxurious cup of coffee. ‘Umami’ completes the set. Seaweed, dried fish, dried fungi and soya sauce all come to mind when looking at this biotic-like form. It seems to take on many guises - from the outset, an inanimate oyster shell but at a glance, a moving, shifting life form with frilly gills. Aquatic or subterranean, I’m not sure. Whatever it may be, the sculpture sends the imagination wild.

Known for her large-scale renditions of mollusks and birds of prey, Gray takes recognisable forms from the natural world and turns them into ornamental works of art. Using a mix of materials, including jesmonite, metal leaf and found natural material, Gray’s sculpture is both an embodiment of nature’s beauty and the artist’s own self, manifesting ideas, feelings and even traumas. ‘Words I could not say, your blood is my blood’ is one such work. Showing a bed of mussels, made from jesmonite and pigment, affixing a piece of found deadwood, the artwork bespeaks the artist’s relationship with her father and all the ‘words [she] could not say’. Like pinched mouths, the mussel shells signify all the unsaid, unspoken, unspeakable words that Gray has collectively carried all these years. They’ve become a part of her, like the mussels barnacled to their gnarly subsidiary. Like a callous or corn that can be easily ignored but if probed, painful and intrusive.

Lucy Gray
‘Words I could not say, your blood is my blood’
Pigmented jesmonite and wood

Reappropriating driftwood from the local coast line, deadwood and heather root that she gathers from the woods and glens around her, Gray draws directly from the wilderness around her. She walks the shoreline and scales the hillside and by doing so, she becomes a moving and present part of the landscape, entering a liminality that gives rise to ideas and feelings.  She says, "In my work I translate an idea through natural forms, capturing the tipping point, the metamorphosis." This so called ‘metamorphosis’ is partly visualised in the size of Gray's work. Mussel and oyster shells- in reality no bigger than a soap dish- are scaled-up into large and impressive works of art. The size of these works coupled with their iridescent, gilded interiors evoke something godly and as awe-inspiring as the natural world itself.

Discover more about Lucy Gray and her sculpture here.