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Lucy Hutchings (b. Hong Kong, 2001), is a British painter based in London, England. She studied her BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Leeds Art University (2022) before completing an MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School (2024). Lucy is the recipient of the Harriet Anstruther Prize 2024 and is a shortlisted finalist for the Ingram Prize 2025.
“My painting practice explores the human condition through themes of gluttony and debauchery. The figurative paintings are environments where we transition into something unconditioned, often located in beer gardens or nightclubs. I understands these third spaces as a stage to participate in laughable, creative and transgressive characters, pulling imagery from personal or shared experiences of debauchery to turn these familiar environments into unsettling and carnivalesque narratives. Mikhail Bahktin's theory of the mouth plays an important role in my paintings, exploring the open and penetrative as a visual device to exaggerate the vulnerability of merging or sharing the body’s boundaries. Orifices, bodily fluids, laughter and pain are subjects to push and pull compositions that are both pleasurable and grotesque, seductive and repulsive.”
“My painting practice explores the human condition through themes of gluttony and debauchery. The figurative paintings are environments where we transition into something unconditioned, often located in beer gardens or nightclubs. I understands these third spaces as a stage to participate in laughable, creative and transgressive characters, pulling imagery from personal or shared experiences of debauchery to turn these familiar environments into unsettling and carnivalesque narratives. Mikhail Bahktin's theory of the mouth plays an important role in my paintings, exploring the open and penetrative as a visual device to exaggerate the vulnerability of merging or sharing the body’s boundaries. Orifices, bodily fluids, laughter and pain are subjects to push and pull compositions that are both pleasurable and grotesque, seductive and repulsive.”
Works for sale on auction:
Final Order
2025
Oil Paint on Canvas
30 x 40cm
Price on Request
Last summer, Lucy was heavily inspired by the colour yellow, and her associations
to it with urine, beer and staining, as well as the euphoric glow of golden hour. In
this ‘POV’ painting, the image is saturated in a sickly glow, capturing the gluttonous
craving for the last beer of the night, before the bar calls “Final Order”.
Beer Garden
2024
Dry Pigment, Oil paint and Charcoal on Fabriano Paper
50 x 70 cm (framed)
SOLD
This painting is part of a series of works on paper exploring gatherings in beer
gardens and smoking areas, which later informed a larger body of work for Lucy’s
Masters Degree show. The characterisation of the figures, and their presentation
within the scene, draws inspiration from the compositions of early 13th century
frescos and medieval manuscripts.
