Grandmothers Colt 8”x10”

Black Clay with Terra Sigillata and Acrylic Enamel

ABOUT   LUCIA

I’m fascinated by the poetic possibilities of mixed-media drawings, paintings, sculptures, and collages.

Through my artwork, I respond to the joy and sensuality of the human figure, as well as the intrinsic, shifting beauty of nature. My process is expressive and intuitive. My practice encompasses and explores a full range of human emotions and experiences, from the melancholy of a road kill bobcat to the frenzied energy of a Carlos Santana guitar solo.  The work of my artistic predecessors and contemporaries often inspires me. 

I use a variety of materials to draw, paint, and collage on diverse surfaces like paper, canvas, glass, clay, and found objects. At times, I use observational strategies to draw human figures, animals, and natural objects; at other times, I work more abstractly, using shapes, patterns, and geometry to create non-representational images with strong, formal design motifs.  In both cases, I allow materiality to drive the image-making process. 

I received a high school diploma from the Visual Arts program at the North Carolina School of the Arts, a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art, and an MSE from Bank Street College and Parsons School of Design.  My work has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery and the Watergate Gallery in Washington, DC. In North Carolina, I have exhibited extensively at venues such as Five Points Gallery (formerly Pleiades), Durham Arts Council, Blackwood Station Gallery, Claymakers Gallery, Broad Street Café, and Durham Arts Place.

I have taught art to generations of students of all ages in various public and private settings for over four decades.  Currently, I guide arts integration, Project-Based Learning, and curriculum at Central Park School in Durham, NC.

on Surface Play

—Bob Robinson

“ Lucia Marcus’s artworks don’t mean anything. Working with what she describes as ‘design, materials, and heart,’ Marcus helps the viewer experience the complex tranquility of a naked swim in the outdoors. Marcus’s subjects range from sleeping dogs to sweet gumballs—’things I like’—and she renders them sensuously on her various media, the process of the art being paramount. For all of us, there could be a story behind the image of a woman covering her bowed face with her hands—she lost a mate, a child, or life is just momentarily overwhelming. Similarly, peacefully sleeping dogs and dead mice conjure particular feelings. Such images are strongly evocative, and Marcus captures them without being treacly or maudlin because design elements, colors, and textures are at once technically accomplished, familiar, and innovative in their media. On glass paintings, for example, often considered decorative or naive folk art, Marcus renders nudes in the wild in a painterly style; photographic realism, the expressiveness of color, and the interplay of surface and materials drag the viewer to a new understanding of the potential of the medium. On ‘Six Serial Nudes,’ a large painting on canvas, gestural forms seem to dance to the gently swirling patterns that were inspired by the music [she] listens to as she paints.”

Shut up and paint.

Shut up and paint.