Lucy’s creative journey

Textile designer Lucy Jamieson graduated in 2003 with a BA(Hons) in Visual Culture. She shares her experience and what her course has helped her achieve.

“The opportunity to study art and design history through the ages greatly informed and enhanced my own creative practice; which pre-dated my academic studies, continued throughout my course and now takes the form of textile designs, experimenting with different materials and styles with a view to illustration and occasional forays into theatre/cinematic design.“My creative career began in 1989/1990 with a six-month period of study at the Highfields College of Art and Design in Huddersfield, and with the publication of an ink and brush drawing in the Huddersfield-based poetry magazine, The North.

“A couple of years earlier, aged 14, I drew and painted part of a community mural at the Triangle Community Centre on New Street in Huddersfield. The centre is long since closed and apparently derelict, but I often wonder if my early efforts are still there, hidden under layers of paint and dust.

“Returning to my more recent creative work, although I was briefly involved with a production of The Threepenny Opera for Opera North as a teenager, I knew very little of theatre design or its history. In so many ways it was my undergraduate study of Greek, Roman and English Renaissance theatre, the discovery of Inigo Jones and visits to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden that expanded my knowledge and encouraged me to learn about contemporary technical theatre in order to attempt some design projects of my own; including two-dimensional designs and a scale model for the York Shakespeare Company’s 2012 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

“Some of my work has also been informed by an interest in the history of film and the moving image more generally. As a child, I was fascinated by material from the early to mid-twentieth century; from Charlie Chaplin to Harold Lloyd, and how animations were produced at the early Disney studios. But once again it was my undergraduate degree that revived my interest in moving image production through the availability of lectures on Fritz Lang, Sergei Eisenstein and other cinematic pioneers. This, in turn, inspired me to teach myself the art of storyboarding, leading to the production of concept images and a storyboard for the Salvatus project (Imaginative Minds Productions, Ltd) and storyboard production for an anti-bullying project aimed at local schools (Mezzo Films).

 

 

More recently still, I have completed a two-day exhibition of my work with Blank Canvas in York, and am continuing to develop the textile design and illustrative aspects of my work, inspired in part by William Morris and Arthur Rackham, and will shortly be commencing a catalogue of my drawings, paintings, sketches and designs from 1989 to the present.

 

Check out some of Lucy’s work here and her newly opened print shop on Facebook.

You can check out Lucy’s online collections here: Textile Designs, The Brighton Series, The Woodland Series, Mixed Media, Animal Studies, Graphic Design, Theatre Design, Production Design for Film, Period Costume, Botanical Studies, Sketchbook Pages, Humanity and Architectural Studies, and don’t forget to visit her Etsy shop.