EXHIBITIONS

4 October 2025, Communities of The Corridor, Group Mosaic, Santa Ana Art Walk, California

August 2025, Arts in California Parks, Guest Artist, Coastal Corridor Alliance, Costa Mesa, California

9th March to 19th April 2024, Art That's Small at City Hall, Group Show, Laguna Beach, California

19th December 2023 (to 9th February) extended to 6th April 2024, 36 Paper Pictures: Washi, Scraps, and Souvenirs, Solo Show, Central Library Gallery, Newport Beach, California

In private collections and The Regents' of The University of California

BIOGRAPHY

Lucie Galvin is an American artist based in Southern California. She studied art history at The University of Michigan; education at St. Mary's College California; garden design at The English Gardening School, London; craftsman gardening with The National Trust for Scotland; and illustration with The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She teaches and practices sustainable gardening and crafts.

STATEMENT

Working with her hands Lucie Galvin forms environmental pictures. She designs and edits gardens outdoors and upcycles planes of colored, patterned, and textured papers into pictures indoors. Deliberately flattened, simplified, decorative, vibrant, and fun, the diaristic subject matter of her paper pictures includes family, gardens, harbors, and home. These motifs subtly reference the heritage and impact of human presence within the natural environment. Seeds and cellulose remind of Nature's presence. Lucie is especially interested in reducing pavement, pollution, and monocultures out of doors and in decorating biophilically indoors - as with these pictures. Her work is influenced by the practices of Darina Allen, Sarah Raven, and Alice Waters, Rinpa, The Nabis, California Regionalism, and David Hockney.

MATERIALS

Paper plant materials include: Bamboo, banana, camellia, coffee, corn, cotton, cucumber, daphne, ficus, flax, gampi, hemp/jute, indigos, mango, mitsumata, mulberry, nettle, oak, onion, papyrus, pear, pine, rice, sandalwood, snake plant, and anonymous hard and softwoods in upcycled calendars, candy wrappers, cardboards, card stock, cellophane, construction paper, cup sleeves, flyers, gift wrap, greeting cards, guides, kraft, leaf bags, maps, menus, parchment, pastry boxes, placemats, playbills, receipts, ribbons, shopping bags, tickets, to-go containers, and vellum. Most cultivated or wild-found, harvested, stripped, bashed, pulped, mixed, repeatedly dried, and then crinkled, dyed, embossed, foiled, gilt, glittered, hand-painted, lacquered, laminated, marbled, printed, stamped, sun-washed, or left natural by many, many other artists around the world. Some gathered, torn, soaked, bashed, blended, and dried by Lucie. All gleaming with warmth and texture IRL.

To preserve their papers' original character these pictures are unvarnished nor treated with other topical coats or fixatives. Offcuts are saved for future pictures or composted to nurture Nature. Behind the scenes butcher paper supports, glassine paper separates, and rice and other glues bind.

ARTICLE

Cultivating Goodness - The Talent of Lucie Galvin, Tableau Magazine, March/April 2021