In my family home when I was growing up we had a small room filled with dollhouses that my Grandpa Jim had meticulously crafted in his old age. I had my own fake suburb to play with, and my first real exercises in imagination involved pushing furniture around stage-like rooms to tell a story about the characters I decided lived in each house.
In my oil paintings for ‘Suburban Rituals’ I feel like I’m still playing with those unreal houses. Windows and other exaggerated open spaces provide a voyeuristic glimpse into households where the occupants are never present. Tools of suburban leisure are scattered throughout the compositions, as if recently abandoned. This indication of sudden absence hints at the sense of surreal mystery that can hide behind stock standard suburban walls, and invites the viewer to imagine their own story about the people who might live there.
When painting, one of my main interests is colour. I’m heavily influenced by palettes from 1960s advertisements for houses and motels. By adopting a retro palette and rendering the houses in a dated style, I’m trying to draw upon the emotion of nostalgia. In these paintings I’ve been experimenting with layering different colours over each other, leaving the edge of the colour underneath to make the paint glow. This technique, coupled with undefined brushstrokes that sink into the linen, attempts to capture the wistful dreaminess that the feeling of nostalgia can conjure.
Lucy O’Doherty’s quirky, immediately identifiable aesthetic is the result of experimentations with colour, technique, light and shade. Using a retro colour palette and undefined brush strokes, she presents an idiosyncratic imitation of suburbia inspired by Depression Era architecture, motel postcards, and 1950s-60s Australian beach culture. Exploiting our sense of nostalgia, O’Doherty evokes unsettling feelings of déjà vu in the viewer – creating worlds that are simultaneously real and surreal, familiar and unknown. Picture perfect at first glance, deeper inspection reveals something a little bit ‘off’ – like childhood memories of long ago places. Was it as idyllic as it seemed, or is childish naivety toying with our recollections? Are we safe here, or is this dreamlike domesticity about to morph into something altogether more sinister?
O’Doherty’s choice of materials aids the surreal sense of mystery that defines her work as the oil sinks into the stretched linen, creating soft lines that hum with an indefinable edge. Her domestic spaces take on a still-life quality as she treats shadows with a solidity that dissects the compositions into an investigation of shapes.
Winner of the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship (2016), O’Doherty completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School, Sydney, in 2011. Highly commended in the Pro Hart Outback Prize in 2016, she has been a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize in 2015, the Brunswick St Gallery Small Works Prize in 2013 and 2012, and the Lethbridge 10000 Small-Scale Art Award in 2012. Her work is held in the Artbank Collection, Imago Mundi Bennetton Collection and in private collections in Australia.
Lucy O'Doherty
Lives and works in Sydney
EDUCATION
2011
Bachelor of Fine Arts, National Art School, Sydney
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020
'Days Dissolve', China Heights Gallery, Sydney (forthcoming)
‘The Brandon Trackman Memorial Exhibition and Silent Auction', Lilac City Studio, Sydney
2016
‘Step Up to the Plate,’ Defiance Gallery, Sydney
Pro Hart Outback Art Prize, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, Broken Hill
'Six Young Artists', Walcha Gallery of Art, Walcha
'From a Distant Land', aMBUSH Gallery, Sydney
2015
'The Ladies Network', aMBUSH Gallery, Sydney
'POOLS', China Heights Gallery, Sydney
'The Drawing Room', Mils Gallery, Sydney
Mosman Art Prize, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney
'Living Heritage', Hazelhurst Community Gallery, Gymea
2014
'26.11.14', Home@735, Sydney
'The Gold Show', Studio W, Sydney
'HEADGEAR 4', Mils Gallery, Sydney
'Outside In', Walcha Gallery of Art, Walcha
2013
'Rat: A Collaborative Exhibition', 113 William St, Sydney
'Maudlin', Mils Gallery, Sydney
'Small Works Prize', Brunswick St Gallery, Melbourne
'Pop-up Show', Walcha Gallery of Art, Walcha
2012
'Same Four, New Works', Walcha Gallery of Art, Walcha
10000 Small-Scale Art Award, Lethbridge Gallery, Brisbane
Small Works on Paper Prize, Brunswick St Gallery, Melbourne
2011
National Art School Graduate Show, National Art School Gallery, Sydney
'Niddy Griddy', National Art School Gallery, Sydney
'Glochenschpiel', Walcha Gallery of Art, Sydney
2010
'Cosine Vol. 3 Launch', Pocket Bar, Sydney
'Profiler', Alpha Gallery, Sydney
AWARDS
2016
Winner, Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Highly Commended, Pro Hart Outback Art Prize
2015
Finalist, Mosman Art Prize
2013
Finalist, Brunswick St Gallery Small Works Prize
2012
Finalist, Lethbridge 10000 Small-Scale Art Award
Finalist, Brunswick St Gallery Small Works on Paper Prize
COLLECTIONS
Imago Mundi Benetton Collection
Private collections in Australia and Internationally
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2016
Feature, Lucy O’Doherty wins Brett Whitely art scholarship, The Guardian, 22 September
Feature, Elizabeth Fortescue, Lucy O’Doherty to swap the huts of Era Beach for the boulevards of Paris on Whitely art scholarship, The Daily Telegraph, 22 September
Featured, Worn is a label built on collaboration, art and happiness (‘House’ collaboration with Australian fashion label Worn), I-D Magazine, 8 September
2015
Interview, Monster Children, Annual issue 49
Interview, Domesticity, Think Positive, blog, 11 October
The detritus of bushfires – black, dusty charcoal – is being gathered up from fire fields across New South Wales and given to more than 100 artists so they can produce works for a fundraising exhibition at Carriageworks in March.
A dream-team of Australian artists, including Mambo legend Reg Mombassa and his daughter Lucy O’Doherty, are joining forces with international names including Shepard Fairey (designer of the iconic Barack Obama ‘Hope’ image) for the so-called RISE exhibition.
Rob Howe, Kevin McKay, Lucy O’Doherty, Zuza Zochowski
In this exhibition four artists come together to explore what the Great Australian Dream looks like through different eyes. From urban scapes with industrial and commercial buildings, to idiosyncratic depictions of post war architecture and suburban streetscapes that could be anywhere. As they reflect on their own experience of home, community and place, the artists create their own nostalgia, formed through popular culture and personal experience.
An exhibition of artworks by 20 young Australian artists celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, will be on view at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney from 22 March to 5 May 2019.
The Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship was established by Ms Beryl Whiteley (1917-2010) who generously allocated funds for the scholarship in memory of her son, Brett Whiteley, to provide young painters the opportunity to travel to Paris and explore Europe in order to develop their artistic practice. Since its inception in 1999, 20 young painters have followed in the footsteps if Brett Whiteley who won the Italian Government Travelling Scholarship in 1959.
The exhibition features works by Sally Anderson, Alice Byrne, Mitch Cairns, James Drinkwater, Petrea Fellow, Becky Gibson, Nathan Hawkes, Alan Jones, Nicole Kelly, Belem Lett, Lucy O’Doherty, Wayde Owen, Timothy Phillips, Tom Polo, Ben Quilty, Karlee Rawkins, Samuel Wade, Amber Wallis, Natasha Walsh, and Marcus Wills, alongside the four paintings by Brett Whiteley that secured him the Italian Government Travelling Scholarship, displayed together for the first time since 1959.
The exhibition presents the works by each artist that were entered and/ or won the scholarship, works resulting from their residency at the Cite Internationale des Art, Paris and recent work. The cohort of scholarship awardees features three artists who have gone on to win the Archibald Prize and many have now established themselves on the art scene and exhibit regularly.
doingbird is an independently published fashion/art publication celebrating creative freedom. It recently featured Lucy O'Doherty who talked about growing up in an artistic family.
Australian fashion label Lee Mathews featured Lucy O'Doherty in Paris for their LM Woman fashion shoot....
We met Australian artist Lucy O’Doherty on her last evening in Paris. After winning the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Lucy has just spent her summer working and living from a small studio in the Cité Internationale des Arts, an artist residency along the Seine that feels like a United Nations for young artists. The building is impressive; a maze of over 300 studios allowing musicians, performers and artists from over 50 countries to develop their practice.
For Lucy, her work mostly revolves around the home; she paints places that are always empty and suburban, with a soft fuzziness that makes each work glow with a mysterious sadness. They may be sad but they are far from bleak, the 1950's colour schemes Lucy uses of seafoam green, flesh pink and butter are oddly cheery -reminiscent of the wacky homes of Peg Boggs and her neighbours in Edward Scissorhands.
We talked to Lucy about her paintings, where she finds inspiration, her personal style (she has great taste!) and the female artists she admires (get ready to right click and google).'
Lucy O'Doherty's exhibition 'Shelter' has been featured on The Design Files blog. Lucy spoke to Elle Murrell about her latest exhibition 'Shelter', her inspiration and winning the 2016 Brett Whiteley Scholarship:
Artist Lucy O’Doherty first found inspiration in cherished childhood doll houses built by her Grandpa. Later, it was vintage advertisements or postcards from the 1950s and 1960s. Her more recent suburban-focused scenes, however, are fictional composites, imagined in tribute. ‘I really can’t remember being interested in depicting anything other than domestic settings,’ reminisces the graduate of Sydney’s National Art School. ‘Except, maybe, when I went through a phase of drawing fairy villages at five! I guess they were still forms of habitations in a way.’
Lucy's exhibition is at the gallery from 20 June until 11 July 2017.
In the year that’s passed in between winning the 2016 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and leaving for the three-month residency at the Cité Internationale Des Arts in Paris, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I want to produce during my time here.
Having previously painted mostly detached urban and remote single-storey Australian architecture in depopulated landscapes, Paris is a challenging deviation of subject matter with its ornately trimmed and towering buildings and densely populated streets.
I didn’t want to go into the residency with a preconceived idea of what I wanted to make. I knew I wanted to wait until I arrived, explore my surroundings and make honest responses to moments or places or artworks that interest me. My main objective is to build up a decent amount of observational studies so that when I return to Australia in half a year’s time, I can extract different moments and combine them to make new compositions of merging memories and places from my overall journey.
Lucy O'Doherty's work along with that of her father Reg Mombassa is part of Hazelhurst Regional Gallery's Shack Life exhibition.
SHACK LIFE is an exhibition of artworks by a mix of established artists and members of the shack communities of the New South Wales Royal National Park. Their works respond to the structure of the shacks, the spirit of the community and the power of the surrounding landscape.
The artworks seek to carry on the tradition of artists engaging with the Royal National Park shack communities as exemplified by artists such as Max Dupain, Hal Missingham and Margaret Olley.
Lucy O'Doherty's recent Brett Whiteley Scholarship award is featured in the current edition of Indulge Magazine.
“It’s been life changing, and I think it’s so important that scholarships like Brett Whiteley’s exist so that young artists can be nurtured and pushed in a new direction within their practice.”
Phil Brown from Brisbane News spoke to Lucy O'Doherty about her recent Brett Whiteley Scholarship win and 'Suburban Rituals', her first solo exhibition in Brisbane at Edwina Corlette Gallery.
Gallery artist Lucy O'Doherty has been announced today as the recipient of the Brett Whitely Scholarship. Two paintings Shacks at Little Garie and Art deco bungalow from O’Doherty’s winning body of work are on display at the Brett Whiteley Studio alongside works by finalists Jason Phu (highly commended), Abdul Abdullah, Clara Adolphs, Tsering Hannaford, Andrew Hopkins and Zoe Tweedale.
Begun in 1999, this scholarship for young Australian painters is now in its 18th year. This year’s judges were artist Tom Carment and head curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW, Wayne Tunnicliffe. They selected this year’s winner from seven finalists, shortlisted from 91 entries.
O’Doherty has won $30,000 and a three-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, which is administered by the Art Gallery of NSW.
About the scholarship
The annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship is open to Australian artists aged between 20 and 30 years. It was created from an endowment by Mrs Beryl Whiteley, who died in 2010. The inspiration was the profound effect international travel and study had on her son, the artist Brett Whiteley, as a result of winning the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship at the age of 20.
1 – 19 June 2021 Lucy O'Doherty‘Blue Hour’
26 June 2019 – 17 July 2019
THE NEW GALLERY SHOW — A Group Exhibition
