Author: Lucy Calcott

I write poetry, children's stories and the occasional article. I also love to paint and usually work in acrylic, water based crayon and charcoal. I am principally interested in an emotional or spiritual response to landscape so I am more focused on creating atmosphere than actual representation. I like figures too. In my writing I am searching for a contemporary religious female voice which is tolerant and open hearted . I have a MA in Creative Writing from Sussex University and have had poetry published in various journals. I also have a small collection of poems in print; Magdalene and other poems. I have exhibited paintings and poetry locally in Eastbourne and the surrounding area and with Christian Arts nationally. I am also a nurse and a mother of three grown up children. I long for a greener, more compassionate, unified world and am active in the interfaith movement.

Discovery

I was at an exhibition in Bristol last Saturday with my old family friends Jo and Katie. To my delight we walked into a room full of huge and wonderful paintings by Sonia Lawson. A painter I didn’t know previously. They were memorising, rich colour, thick texture and repetitive primitive images of animals and figures. What a discovery and a timely reminder to myself that painting can be uplifting. Despite the rain outside the paintings left me with a warm feeling of renewed wonder and hope. This is what art can do, it can be soul food and when those connections come they are priceless.