ABOUT LUCY

Born in the UK in 1962 and transported to Australia at the tender age of 2, Lucy was influenced early on by her father who adored cartoons. During her teen years, the drawings of Gerard Hoffnung, Charles Addams and Saul Steinberg were instrumental in forcing her to pick up a pen and draw humorous ideas from her keen observations of life around her. Later, Maira Kalman, Jean-Philippe Delhomme, Cecil Beaton and Raoul Dufy informed her paintbrush.

Lucy has a degree in Japanese and History from the University of Adelaide in South Australia. With a fascination for human communication and behavioural observation, she ran a cross-cultural executive search firm in Asia for 25 years. She is multi-lingual: able to speak English, Japanese and E-Spaniel, ably assisted over recent years by her cocker spaniel, Baci and more recently, Pepper.

Having a keen interest in (human) portraiture, she has studied at Studio Escalier in Paris and as such, the principles of human portraiture painting are often observed - turning famous humans into infamous canines through her paintbrush.

Her paintings are a light-hearted reflection of behaviour where celebrity, history, fashion, food, literature, art history, music and luxury travel all collide in a delightfully funny way.

From 2015, as THE DOGOPHILE, Lucy has continued to publish The Adventures of Baci - a mini-series story on Instagram.

She held her first solo exhibition in Arles, France in 2016, entitled DOGLAND and second in Jamestown, South Australia in 2019, entitled DOGLAND GOES BUSH. Lucy’s paintings are held in private collections in Paris, London, New York City, Houston, Arles, Bordeaux, Sydney and Adelaide. Lucy lives in Sydney with her husband, Richard and Pepper.

STATEMENT

In her previous life running a Cross-Cultural Executive Search firm in Asia for 25 years Lucy Marshall met and interviewed thousands of senior executives across numerous societies and cultures. Having always been fascinated by communication, human behaviour, cultural differences and having observed humans for so long in different markets, when a dog first arrived into her family, Lucy then started to analyse dog behaviour! - its similarities and differences to human behaviour.

There are different breeds of dogs, different cultures, looks, behaviour and attitudes. Universally however, dogs are always loyal, eager to please, honest, devoted, caring and genuinely pleased to see one. Unfortunately, Lucy knows this isn’t always the case with humans.

Dogs are a universal theme - everyone everywhere understands their behaviour. By turning dogs into people in her paintings (and people into dogs), combined with humour and whimsy at all times, Lucy hopes to shine a light back on human behaviour - and what is so unique and fascinating about it. And by poking gentle fun, she hopes to allow people not to take themselves quite so seriously.

And, of course, Lucy’s dogs do like the finer things in life - they like to travel first class, attend opera and theatre, collect fine art, live amongst fine design, take selfies, dress fashionably each season, eat well and drink champagne. They represent a modern global luxe, influencer/celebrity culture of this moment.