Click on thumbnails below for full details and enlarged images.
 

Lucy Orchard    Lord Horatio Nelson's Coat ll	Lucy Orchard     Nelson's Coat III (Performing 'Song for the Unification of Europe')	Lucy Orchard   Nelson's Coat  l (Emma Hamilton sleeps in Naval)
Lucy Orchard  Looking for Patience and Grace	Lucy Orchard  Finding Patience and Grace	Lucy Orchard  Chit Chatting with Venus
Resurrecting Nelson (using a combination of Einsteins' Theory of Relativity, Zimmermann's Theory of Particle Fission + some breathtaking	Lucy Orchard       Sail Away with Me	Lucy Orchard Branded
Lucy Orchard  Branded	Lucy Orchard  Branded	Lucy Orchard  One and the Same

    Lucy Orchard 

Sail Away with Me

Watercolours

 

 Lucy Orchard Sail Away With Me

A series of work that continues Lucy Orchards exploration of and obsession with the sea. 

Sail Away With Me is a collection of exquisite paintings in watercolour  through which Orchard explores the extremes of life experience that defines us. The paintings are inspired by Lord Nelson's coat, which is on permanent display at the National Maritime Museum.  

These paintings use the sea as a metaphor to explore the journey of love, from breathtaking moments to emotional desolation, and of hope, perseverance, faith and trust.   

The paintings  draw on Lucy Orchard's  extraordinary maritime ancestral history, which includes seven generations of master mariners, a pirate from Bristol and, particular to this collection, an able seaman who served with Lord Nelson on HMS Badger.

About the work:

Branded has two meanings. It is about being in touch with one's own shadow. According to Jung, the 'shadow' refers to all that lies outside the light of the conscious mind, and may be positive or negative and guides us through our lives. The less the shadow is embodied in a person's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is; it may also however, be 99% gold.  

But the painting also takes inspiration from Julia Kristeva's definition of love - 'an exaltation beyond eroticism that is as much inordinate happiness as it is pure suffering; both turn words into passion' (Kristeva, Tales of Love, 1987), or, of course, creativity.

To find optimism and hope at times of great loss requires immense faith and soul-searching, and this is the meaning behind Looking for Patience and Grace, using the sea as a metaphor for this exploration of the depths of oneself.

By the power invested in the artist, Lucy brings Nelson back to life in Resurrecting Nelson (using a combination of Einsteins' Theory of Relativity, Zimmerman's Theory of Particle Fission, and a touch of magic).In resurrecting Lord Nelson the painting underlines the power of imagination over knowledge because, as Einstein once remarked, without imagination we would never have ideas profound enough to make scientific progress.

Nelson's Coat III (Performing 'Song for the Unification of Europe') takes it’s inspiration directly from a piece of music by Priesner from Krystof Kieślowski's film Three Colours Blue, the lyrics for which are from the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 13:

Though I speak with the tongues of angels,


If I have not love


My words would resound with but a tinkling cymbal or resounding gong.


And though I have the gift of prophesy,

And understand all mysteries and all knowledge


And though I have enough faith to move the mightiest mountains,


If I have not love, I am nothing.


Love is patient, love is kind


It tolerates all things,

Hopes all things,

Always perseveres.


Love never fails.

While the prophecies shall be done away,

Tongues shall be silenced,


Knowledge shall fade.


Thus then shall linger only
 faith, hope, and love,

But the greatest of these is love.