Mercedes Lucy

What led to you becoming an artist? It was a non-traditional route. I went to Camberwell College of Arts to do a foundation course, but there was a house fire where I was living, and my portfolio was in the fire. That happened just before my degree course interviews, so it meant I couldn’t apply. My tutor asked if I would like to stay on and do another year of my foundation, but I didn’t want to do the same course again. I had actually found college quite stifling, and I also get bored very easily because I have ADHD. Before you tell me what happened next, I am interested to know if you think your ADHD was partly responsible for pursuing a creative path? I hated school, but the ADHD was undiagnosed then. Thankfully, I had two inspiring and supportive art teachers, so I spent a lot of time in the art department when I should have been doing my other subjects. I think the school decided that if that meant I stayed in school, then it was a happy compromise. I just found art limitless in terms of what I could do, and it enabled me to express myself at that young age. Were your parents creative? No, not really. They were all creative, but none of them were artists. I got an art scholarship to the school that I was at, so it just felt as though that was the thing that I should be doing. When I went on to art college, I was actually uninspired but again, I think that was out of the same frustrations that I felt at school. Your work is very personal – it’s a bit like a musician writing lyrics about themselves. Was the frustration at art school a result of not being able to really convey your personality at that stage? Partly, yes, but also they were suggesting that I should go into graphic design because I wouldn’t make any money as a painter – but painting was what I really wanted to do. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what it was, but I didn’t feel that I had the freedom I was looking for, and this was when I was 18, had moved to London and was discovering things like going out and living away from the safety of the family home. I just wanted to get on with it and that’s the ADHD. I don’t like waiting around, and the idea of doing a degree for three or four years just didn’t feel right. In hindsight I missed a lot, and if I did a degree now, I think I would love it.

So, you started at art college but then realised that wasn’t right for you. What happened next? I was working at a pub then and I started chatting to a customer one day. He said that he thought I’d be good in PR. I didn’t even know what PR was, but fast forward to some time later when I was at a music festival, and another guy asked me what I did for a living. I told him that I was waitressing, but that I wanted to work in PR. He owned a PR company and asked if I would like to work for him, so I did.  I spent 10 years in PR, working for everyone from the Duchess of York to Hunter Wellies, and it was great. I was 20 and on a salary of 25 grand when all my friends were still at uni, but as you would expect for me, I eventually got fed up with it and decided to start up my own freelance creative business with a friend, predominantly working in fashion and art. I was working with artists, photographers, fashion designers, putting on exhibitions, getting them press coverage, that kind of thing.

I was with my ex-husband then. He was a music producer, and we were living the dream in East London, but then I had my first child, which meant that I had to slow down on my work.  We were still paying thousands on rent for our home and his music studio, and it was just getting too expensive for us. A couple of people we knew suggested that we looked around Margate and think about living there, so we came down, but at that time it was still a bit of a dump, to be honest, so it didn’t immediately appeal. But then my brother, who’s quite sensible, bought a house in Ramsgate. He’d been looking for a property in South London, but all he could afford were properties the size of a shoebox, so he bought a house in Ramsgate instead. We were staying with him one weekend and walked past this property and saw it was for sale. It was massive compared to anything we could get in London and only £150k, so we bought it. It made good economic sense, but I soon began to resent it, and I think that was probably the start of the end of our marriage. My husband was still working in London, but I had gone from having a very lively life to then suddenly being on my own with a baby, and it began to feel as though I had committed social as well as career suicide. I had quite severe postnatal depression and was wondering what the hell was going on.

Then, of course, I conveniently got pregnant with twins when my eldest was just one. Did I detect a little sarcasm in your voice then? Just a little bit. I had a one-year-old who couldn’t walk, and I was pregnant with twins, so I wasn’t very happy. It was a dark time, but my creativity continued wherever it could, from dyeing clothes and life drawing, through to making plaster casts of bits of my children, so the house began to become my creative outlet. So, despite the situation you found yourself in, it actually resulted in you going full circle, back to where you wanted to be, on a creative path. Exactly. There’s a place up the road called Clay Space and I would go to their drop-in sessions. It was my way of getting away from the kids for a while and just switching off, I guess. I started making some really questionable things that I hope are now in landfill, but I didn’t care!

Being diagnosed with ADHD was the real lightbulb moment. I thought, holy fuck, this explains so much.

Can you give me a hint at what you mean by questionable? Oh my God. At my ex-husband’s parents’ house, there was a mirror in their bathroom that said, ‘Smile, it’s the second-best thing you can do with your lips’. That had always tickled me, so I made a series of vulva-shaped incense burner holders with the same quote written around the edge and gifted them to my family. I would like to have been a fly on the wall when they opened their presents that year! You can see the same humour and desire to challenge people in your work today. That does come out a lot in my work. I always like to be a bit tongue-in-cheek and not take things too seriously, and I’m happy to apply the same approach to myself as well. I’m very happy to expose myself and point out the things that other people don’t really like to talk about. My mum used to say, ‘Never air your dirty laundry’, and I felt sad for her because she found it very, very difficult to talk about her emotions. I’m an extremely emotional person as well, and I have a slight regret about the fact that my ADHD was diagnosed after my mum’s death, because she
would have really been thrilled to have known about that. In what way? I think she was always quite baffled by me, that I never take a traditional route. When I was diagnosed with depression, she was so happy because it meant that I would be getting medication, which she thought might calm me down. It didn’t calm me down, but it certainly helped. I still take antidepressants now, but being diagnosed with ADHD was the real lightbulb moment and I just thought, holy fuck, this explains so much. I did the whole grieving thing of looking back at my past and thinking that’s why I was a difficult child, that’s why I was highly emotional, and that’s why my marriage broke down – because it was that emotion that my ex-husband just couldn’t get to grips with. You have to adapt your life when you are living with something like ADHD. It’s not a disability as such, but it can become debilitating. Because I was unable to work and keep myself busy when I first had my children, I found myself in a very dark place. Was it a sense of being trapped? Absolutely, I was breastfeeding twins, and I had a one-year-old. I couldn’t leave the house some days and was going stir crazy. I think that’s when being creative was something that I literally had to do to survive. Shortly after my mum died, I cleared a kind of utility space that we had and turned it into an art room for the kids. They were four and two then, so there wasn’t much art that they could do, but it was a space where we could just roll around in paint if we wanted to. And how did that evolve into you becoming an artist? We had started work on an extension to our house, and I told the builder that I was going to make some tiles for the kitchen. I’d never made a tile before in my life and looking back, I don’t really know what I was talking about, but that’s how it began, with what was supposed to be a splashback. There are now tiles throughout my house which have been inspired by my family, Margate and the artists that I admire. It was that which led to me meeting Tracey (Emin).

What was your first commission? It was for a model called Alice Dellal. She asked me to create tiles for her bathroom that she was renovating. That started off as a small project but had grown into a large one by the time it finished. I’m working on another tile-based commission at the moment for a pub in Deal called The Rose. I’ve already done one fireplace for them, so this will be for a second one. At the same time, I was also doing sculptural work like this jug, which is called Gemini, from a zodiac series. Your work is very tactile isn’t it – I’m drawn to want to pick it up and interact with it. It can be frustrating being a ceramicist, because I want people to touch my work, but then you obviously have to be a bit careful because they are also pieces of art. Your practice is now based at TKE studios, which is obviously run by Tracey Emin – how did that come about? I was doing some freelance work part-time for an art studio when a friend of mine called Rob Diament, who was a gallerist at Carl Freedman in Margate, introduced me to Tracey. I told her that I had made a tile of her work and showed her a photo of it. She asked if I was an artist and when I said, not really, I just make stuff, she replied by saying, ‘Well, I think you are’. We got chatting and sort of became friends, so I invited her over for a cup of tea and to see the tile in situ. She came over to the house and, this will make you laugh, the first thing she said as she walked in was, ‘Have you seen that Stacey Dooley programme about hoarders?’ I have since been to Tracey’s house and it is very minimal in terms of its styling, so I now understand the question! It was a very surreal moment to be chatting in my kitchen with Tracey. We didn’t really talk about art that much, but we did talk a lot about cancer. My mum died of cancer but, as I say, she was a very closed person, so I never had a chance to speak to her about that. Tracey, on the other hand, is very open about her experience of the disease, so it was a really important conversation for me. We became friends and she used to knock on my window when she saw me in my studio. Then, when she took over what is now TKE Studios, she said that there was a space there which she thought I might be interested in. At the time I thought there’s no way I could do that – I didn’t really believe I was an artist. But because the project for Alice Dellal had become such a huge job, I’d had to buy a mega kiln and, as a result, I was renting a larger space in a cold warehouse when winter was fast approaching. So when Tracey showed me the studio space that she had picked out for me, I bit her hand off and before I knew it, my kiln was being craned in through the roof – Tracey loved the theatre of it all happening.

I’ve been there for two and a half years now, and it’s been incredible because it’s allowed me to really start exploring my practice. That was where I produced this table which we’re sitting at now. The tiles across the top are glazed with my mum’s ashes. What an incredible thing to have done. How did you develop that idea? That began during Covid, when Clay Space contacted me to ask if I would like to use their studio during lockdown. I owe the owners, Bridget and Ian, so much. They were only offering the space to a few people, because obviously you could only go in one at a time, and they chose to ask me because they felt that I was probably a person who needed some time away from my house and to be doing something different. It meant I had the freedom to go and just make weird stuff and develop ideas. The table idea emerged from that period and at the end of the pandemic, I decided to have an exhibition of the work that I had produced, with the table as the central focus. I cleared the whole kitchen, which you’ll probably find difficult to believe could be done, and made homemade elderflower cordial and kombucha and invited people here. Did your mum know about the tile project? My mum never knew me as an artist, which was something that I find really strange, and that was where this project came from. I made the table and all of the crockery on it. I wanted the pieces to reflect things that my mum didn’t know. My mum didn’t know about Covid, she didn’t know about her grandson and she didn’t know about me being an artist. That developed into what I called the ABC of Me, a series of tiles depicting the A to Z of grief, both the positives and the negatives, or perceived positives and perceived negatives. The tiles that I used for this table were created with her ashes, in the knowledge that it would be in this kitchen, so she is always here with us. When we first used the table, one of my children said it was like having breakfast with Grandma Rachel, which kind of told me that I had done a good job. You have also probably noticed that the benches have castings of mine and my children’s buttocks on them, and that was the start of the casting work that I have produced, looking at themes of domesticity and the household. That time coincided with the start of my separation and divorce process, and it was then that the whole idea of serving also came to the fore because that was what I kind of felt about being a woman. I’ve got three children, all under two, and no matter what happened, I’m still expected to be a mother and a wife, and that kick-started the idea of Eve – someone who, from the beginning of time, has been blamed or seen as not good enough.

Have you always had a feminist stance, or has that been awoken from inside you? My mum had strong beliefs about being feminist, and I think, naively, when I was living in London and living my best life, I didn’t really believe feminism, sexism, misogyny and patriarchy existed on the level that I now understand they do. Then I had children and suddenly felt completely inept, whilst my husband carried on going to work and being a music producer, travelling all over the world, hanging out with like-minded people of his age and doing fun things. There was obviously an incredible amount of frustration bubbling under the surface – or wasn’t it hidden? I was very open about being jealous of him, but I think that he found it very difficult to just listen to what I was saying. Instead, it made him angry. He didn’t understand feminism and whenever I mentioned anything about it, he’d say, “You can’t just bring up feminism every time we have an argument”. I quickly realised that I couldn’t refer to it because he didn’t understand what I was talking about. I suppose that’s where my humour comes in because women are continually banging their heads against brick walls, because men will never get it. I’m not saying that everyone should understand it, but I do think that there should be a level of empathy, sympathy, understanding and a willingness to listen. Look, we’re naturally evolving to not have an appendix, so surely men can evolve to listen to women! Do you think men will ever be able to fully understand how a woman feels? Probably not, but it’s a similar thing to saying Black Lives Matter. As a white woman, I could never fully understand what that means or represents, but I will stand by people and do my best to support them and try to learn from them. Apologies, I have taken you down a bit of a rabbit hole with that conversation. No, this subject is all very relevant and important to my practice.

I was breastfeeding twins and had a one-year-old. I couldn’t leave the house some days and was going stir-crazy. Being creative was something I had to do to survive.

Do you think you use humour in your work as a way of softening the sometimes quite challenging messages and questions that you are posing? Yes, but also I find people that take themselves seriously a bit boring and annoying. I just want them to lighten up and to understand that it’s fine to laugh at some things and be shocked by others. This goes back to that rabbit hole that we just went down because men may feel as though they are being attacked, but I’m not attacking anyone – I’m just asking them to look and realise. I really enjoy the humour in your work. It’s a bit like a slap in the face that forces you to really pay attention. There are boobs, bums… …vaginas. Someone asked me why I use casts of my vagina – if it was just a shock tactic? It made me think about it in more depth and yes, I am definitely looking for that element of shock, but the main reason is just to say, this is what I am. It’s not sexually aggressive or suggestive. As a woman, you are so exposed and this highlights that reality.

It’s interesting that your journey back to art was channelled through what could be described as practical creativity – dyeing clothes, teaching your children and finally making tiles for your kitchen. I certainly think that I had a kind of reason or excuse to make the tiles because I was making them for a reason – they had a practical purpose. Historically women have often been craftspeople as opposed to artists: they make baskets, weave tapestries, make pots to cook with, and that all takes us back to that element of domesticity. I guess I needed ‘permission’ to be an artist again and it’s only recently that I’ve started to make things that you can’t really use. And now your work has a value – how do you feel about that? That’s another really interesting subject because I want people to be able to afford my work. I have always been inspired by people like Quentin Blake. One of my daughters once said that he says things without actually saying them, and I thought that was such a perfect explanation and is exactly what I want to be able to do. I want my work to resonate with people, so I want it to be in their homes and for them to enjoy it, but I’ve also got to make money, so I’m just about to launch Mercedes Lucy Editions. I make a lot of plates which people like buying because they’re affordable, and they’re a bit of me, but it is the fine art side of things that I really love doing, so it’s about finding that balance and maintaining the integrity. No two of my plates are ever the same and they nearly always tie into something that I’m working on in the studio, so there is that link. The other important thing to mention now, which is a big thing that I’m just being introduced to, is the idea of the middle-class artist, where there’s this belief that an artist is either living on the poverty line or they’re very successful. This is really what Mercedes Lucy Editions is all about because I need to survive – I have to pay a mortgage and feed my children. You could also argue that maybe those underlying day-to-day demands that life throws at you help to drive you as an artist. That’s right, and I don’t think I would be here without that drive. I read constantly and I have just finished a book by Jennifer Higgie called The Mirror and the Palette, which is about female artists. You probably won’t have heard of some of them, but in nearly all of the cases, it was only after their deaths that they became well known and their work was subsequently of value. I think that they have paved the way for me, so I feel that I have got to honour them. Women like Alice Neel, who’s hugely famous now, but during her lifetime her sons resented her as a mother. They were on food tokens and living in a tiny New York apartment. There was no father around to help support them and it wasn’t until she was in her 80s that she was finally recognised. You don’t have a choice as an artist, so I feel that I owe it to those female artists that have sacrificed so much before me. I owe it to myself, I owe it to my daughters, and I owe it to my dead mother. I don’t have a choice but to be honest, I don’t want to have that choice now, because I know this is what I should be doing.