Lucy Arden
I am Lucy. Fundamentally me. Artist, writer and creative activist. The essence of me, what makes me tick, what feeds my soul. Creating, being creative, living a creative life. Finding that, holding onto it and standing strong in my identity amidst stormy seas. It hasn't always been this way.
In 2019, after a fire at my shared studio, I returned home to myself, to grief, to difficult unexpressed emotions, to the end of a 15 year long fertility journey. I started an accidental self-directed artist residency in my own home, in my cellar studio, now my sanctuary. Ten years previous, in 2009, after being told we couldn’t conceive, I slipped off the radar of conventional life and my body gave up hope. The medical profession called it Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME), I now know there were many layers to this hidden illness and one had an invisible name, I call it grief. Being told as a woman that you will never be able to conceive was a huge weight to carry and my body crumbled under this bombshell. I had to find ways to pull myself up from the wreckage. Disillusioned by the lack of help, support and guidance from the establishment, I ventured onto my own path, unpicking and unravelling these layers, determined to find solutions, to reclaim my energy and to find my health again. I wouldn’t accept that this illness was going to stay in my life forever. This exploration opened new avenues and pathways, new ways of thinking and seeing the world. In 2014, my health restored by alternative therapies and with a kind person on our side, we gave birth to our miracle son, my greatest creation. I am the mother I am today because of all of this.
My creative practice has been a story of unravelling the threads of life, connecting and joining new threads, unlocking, unpicking and picking up the pieces along the way. An exploration of self, of grief and heartache, of happiness and joy. Light meeting darkness. Darkness meeting light. The emotional rollercoaster of motherhood. The heaviness of fertility and the longing for something you can’t have. I write to make sense of it all. To process my head thoughts. Poems spill onto the page in the dead of night. Intuitive drawings fill blank pages. I sit and hand sew or knit to force myself to sit down and not keep going on the treadmill of the never ending to do list. I am a mother artist, a mother and a maker. My visible and invisible full-time role is motherhood. My creative work centres on motherhood, my journey to becoming a mother, the birth of me as a mother and the challenges of modern motherhood, a very undervalued role in our society. I value my role as a mother and I value my role as an artist. These roles feed into each other, now woven into the fabric of my existence, creativity feeds motherhood, motherhood feeds creativity, my oxygen.
Find out more about Lucy on her website.
