Lucy Austin:

Lucy Austin is a painter and printmaker from the UK, she creates are using mostly watercolours mixed with various other mediums. She creates abstract paintings of urban landscapes.

Above: Lucy in her studio (2018).

Some examples of her work are above. I find her work very curious as she seems to use various layering techniques to create her pieces. She seems to draw from memory from the look of it when I watched her video below on Vimeo. I find it quite hard to understand what some of her artworks are of, I know it’s an ‘urban landscape’ but I find it difficult to focus on anything within the painting, maybe that is what she wants?

When I was looking for a different artist so that I could compare the work of both artists I typed into Google ‘Watercolour artists’ and a number of artists came up at the top of the page. I moved along until a piece of work really caught my eye, then I saw this:

I found the black watercolour the artist has used similar to Lucy Austin’s. I decided to research the artist who had created this artwork.

John Marin:

His name was, John Marin, an early American Modernist Artist who created abstract landscapes in mostly watercolour! I found this really interesting that I had no prior knowledge of who this man was and what his artistic area was, but somehow I decided to choose another abstract artist who creates natural and urban landscape art.

I found this video insightful to understand John Marin’s watercolour art:

Comparing the artists:

• I find that I can understand what John’s art is showing even if the perspective is ‘wrong’ but with Lucy’s art it is almost impossible to understand.
• Lucy’s art is a lot bolder and the lines are thicker and less smudged than in John’s artwork, John uses a lot more ‘muddy’ colour pallet, it even looks as though he is using pastels or crayons to create some of his art.
• I think Lucy uses a lot of watercolour ‘ink’ when creating her work but John uses minimal water for his work as his brushstrokes all look dry.
• The image that originally drew my eye to research more into John’s work and use him as my comparison artist now seems very different to the rest of John’s art? It is very bold and looks more similar to Lucy’s art.
• In my own personal opinion (even though I like both artist’s work and find them interesting) I find Lucy’s work more aesthetically pleasing and would be more likely to look at her work.