Today we’d like to introduce you to Lucinda Cobley.
Hi Lucinda, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I first saw a series of paintings by Mark Rothko on an art college trip to the Tate Gallery in London when I was 17 years old. The paintings are known as The Seagram Murals from 1958 and mainly consist of abstract blocks of color conducted in a somber palette of red, maroon and black. Originally, they were a commissioned series for the Four Season’s Restaurant in The Seagram Building in New York, but Rothko withdrew them as he preferred for them to be seen in a more permanent and serious setting, so he gifted them to The Tate. Although I knew very little about abstract painting at that time, I had to acknowledge they deeply moved me. The stacked rectangular forms, painterly quality of the brushstrokes, and emotive use of color were all powerful. The memory stayed with me and later helped me realize that isolating each of these components was worthy of further investigation.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My creative journey has been rough and smooth with plenty of twists and turns along the way. When my husband was offered a job in the States almost 30 years ago we packed up and moved from London to Houston. In London I taught on a fashion course part-time at The University of the Arts, freelanced in illustration and spent my time drawing from the human figure. The move changed my artistic trajectory, I decided to give all of my focus to abstract painting. I started working with glass again, my Bachelor of Arts had been in Glass Design, so I decided to explore painting on surfaces other than canvas. I used panels of sandblasted glass and cast acrylic as substrates. My first abstract series, called Lucid Evidence, was derived from casting shadows from found objects onto a stack of glass panels and I traced and recorded their blurry shadows. I reduced the color palette of paints down to one or two colors to signify the memory of the object and where I remembered finding it. Glass is not an easy material to work with, it is expensive, fragile and challenging to work with. However, I persisted and this series was initially exhibited at Art League Houston, then later toured around Texas as part of a juried exhibition called CraftHouston, organized by The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Of course, this shift in working methods did not happen overnight, it took years for my vision to take shape and it still continues to evolve.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I contemplate the transitory nature of time. Then, with an intense desire to capture the ephemeral I endeavour to substantiate it as an expression of pure color. I try to remember things seen and colors experienced from long ago. I think, “carpe diem”, as I hurredly record a memory, dream, a passing shadow or light effect by transcribing, noting and recording. Any hesitation and the moment could be lost forever. I formulate painterly effects in a chromatic palette that rebounds between the reductive and expressive, to arrive at moments of stillness or movement. Allusions are made to meandering journeys of places real or imagined. The margins or gaps within each series of work are spaces to discover the unknown in their apparent emptiness or in their full expression. Within their delicate linear and gridded marks, underlying mysterious texts, drawings and notes appear to orientate the fields of color and evoke possible meanings. These are places to meditate upon, or to lose focus within their softly dissolving boundaries. Observations are derived from spaces that operate in the natural world or within human constructions such as architecture or sculpture where shadows or passing light effects skip across their surfaces. Historical and contemporary materials, such as silverpoint, casein, ink, oil, acrylic and watercolor are drawn, painted or printed onto a range of media that includes paper, wood, glass, and plastic.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
The Jung Center recently exhibited my experimental series Interlude and Correspondence as part of PrintHouston. The work is a reflection on spaces that allow the imagination to pass, fragment, wander or settle. Each birchwood panel is screen-printed with watercolor and crystalline pigments to create floating color blocks suspended within and upon grids and lines of silver and goldpoint with accompanying drawings, writings and notations. A mental vision of an adobe brick led Agnes Martin to move from New York to New Mexico to build her permanent studio residence. Her transformative vision inspires my own lines of inquiry to embody qualities of color, light, stillness and movement.
A survey of my work is now currently on view in Houston at Cothren Contemporary in an exhibition called Chromaticity. Please contact Jana Cothren by email – janacoth@gmail.com or by cell phone 832.767.8370 for details and an appointment to see and experience the artworks. Chromaticity is on view until September 30, 2026.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cothrencontemporary.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucinda_cobley/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lucindacobley.artist
