writer and illustrator
About David Lucas
I believe the world is alive with magic - and it's that feeling that really inspires my work.
My drawing is picture-writing - I never draw from life - I make patterns, as if I were knitting
with ink. I love medieval art and folk art – art that is decorative not just to be beautiful,
but because pattern-making is like weaving a magic spell.
Writing, for me, is pattern-making too - putting words together as if they were simple shapes,
making story-patterns that are a mixture of autobiography and myth and fairytale.
I was born in Middlesbrough, where my mother was a teacher and my father worked in the
steelworks. I am the third of six brothers, and as children we were all dressed the same - same
haircut, same jeans, same jumpers.
When I was five years old we came to London (my father had decided to go to art college)
and at first we lived in a tent before moving to a council flat in Hackney.
My parents both loved nature so I often spent holidays exploring forests and
wandering on the moors in Yorkshire or by the seashore.
I loved ruins and castles too - magical, haunted places.
I always enjoyed drawing and in my teens I became fascinated by mythology and folklore
and began writing stories and inventing imaginary worlds and characters.
But in my twenties, at art college, I turned my back on the person I'd been and did my best
to be fashionable and it wasn't until I was in my thirties that I rediscovered my old love
of fairytales and began writing stories again.
I live in east London, close to where I grew up, beside Victoria Park, where I
spend the mornings writing, looking out onto the park, listening to the birds
singing and the canal boats chugging past.
I paint and draw in my studio near London Fields.
"as remarkable a writer as he is an illustrator." Publishers Weekly
"Lucas's work brings to mind such great exponents of graphic art as
Saul Steinberg and Paul Klee."
Ian Beck, The Times.
A recent interview:
http://www.playingbythebook.net/2011/06/08/an-interview-with-david-lucas
David Lucas
studio 5
231 Stoke Newington Church Street
London
N16 9HP
