A woman crouched on the floor in a dimly lit art studio, working on a large canvas with abstract purple and blue design. Art supplies such as brushes, jars, and paints are scattered in front of her. The wall behind her has several round, colorful paintings, and a large, partially finished painting with shades of blue, purple, and white is visible on the wall.

Cinematic memory, oval architectures…

Lucy Cade’s paintings translate mid-century cinematic memory structures into fixed, oval architectures. Working from analogue photographs taken directly from film screens she treats the image as already mediated and unstable. The oval format, historically associated with devotional portraiture, is repurposed as a device of containment: a frame that both isolates and constricts its subject.

Built through successive layers of wet oil, the surfaces operate as temporal accumulations rather than direct representations. The cinematic dissolve becomes painterly suspension; narrative progression is replaced by delay. Repetition across the series produces subtle shifts in gaze, gesture and tonal density, establishing a disciplined visual language that holds psychological charge without resolving it.

Cade’s work situates painting as a site where memory, mediation and containment converge - fixed yet unsettled, intimate yet structurally composed.

CV

Lives and works between London & Rutland/Lincolnshire, UK.

Education:

Turps Summer School, 2025; Turps Offsite Programme, 2023-4; MA Fine Art, City & Guilds of London Art School, 2022-23 (Distinction); Turps Correspondence Course 2021-22; PGCE, University of Cambridge, 2012-3; BA Hons Art History/Classics, University of Oxford, 2003-2006 (2:1)

Selected Exhibitions:

Solo:

2024: Dancing to a Mirror, Fitzrovia Gallery, London

2022: Disrupted Icons (The Maternal Gaze), with soundscape by Eleanor Turner, The Crypt Gallery, London

Group:

2026: FLOW, Seager Gallery, London; Irving Open, Irving Gallery, Oxford

2025: Doubles & Triples, Three Rooms Gallery, London; Distant Voices, ArtworksEast, London; Turps Summer School Leavers Show, Turps Gallery, London; The Sound of Form (Rise Art), Montcalm Hotel, London; Quiet. Bright, Terrace Gallery, London

2024: Rise Art x Glennfiddich, 24 Mortimer Street, London; In Search of Lost Time, Liliya Gallery, London; Hard Candy, Transition Gallery at Space Studios, London; It Rose and It Fell, Terrace Gallery, London; A Room of One's Own, Irving Gallery, Oxford

2023: Cynthia Corbett Gallery group show, The Exhibitionist Hotel, London; Under Their Skin, One Paved Court, London; Mother Of All, Blue On The Hill Gallery, London; Wells Art Contemporary 2023, Wells Cathedral, Somerset; Stretch, Somers Gallery, London

2022: Group Exhibition, Liliya Art Gallery, Putney, London; I Felt That, The Tub, Hackney, London; Material Presence, Fitzrovia Gallery, London

2021:‍ ‍A Room of Her Own, Irving Contemporary, Oxford; No Reserve, with InFems Art Collective at Leicester Contemporary, Leicester

2020: Alone, Together, curated by Shannon Skye Robinson, online; Spring Awakening, London Paint Club, online

2009 – 2019: During this period I was unable to work due to being in and out of hospital with acute Postnatal Psychosis and related illnesses

2008: OBSessions, Modern Art, Oxford

2007: Metamorphosis, Surface Gallery, Nottingham

2005: ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London

Residencies:

2025: Clovermill x Mollie. E. Barnes Duo Residency, Clovermill Artist Residency, The Netherlands

2022: Hotel Alphabet x InFems Residency, Marsciano, Perugia, Italy

2021: Artist-in-residence, Leicester Contemporary, Leicester

Curation:

2025: Doubles & Triples, Three Rooms Gallery, London; Quiet. Bright, Terrace Gallery, London

2024: Dancing to a Mirror, Fitzrovia Gallery, London

Teaching:

2024: Lecturer, Feminist Art History Lecture Programme, online

2022 - present: Artist Mentor for Spilt Milk Gallery Mentoring Programme, Edinburgh

2015 - present: Private tutor in a variety of subjects

Awards:

2023: Wells Art Contemporary (shortlisted); Chaiya Art Award (shortlisted)

2022: CuratorSpace Bursary #18; The Eaton Fund; The Whitebread Trust; Charlotte Bonham-Carter Award; Jackson’s Painting Prize (shortlisted)

2021: Developing Your Creative Practice Grant, Arts Council England Project: ‘The Wounded Oyster Turns Grit into Pearl: Processing Trauma through Painting’; The Alpine Fellowship Visual Arts Prize(shortlisted)

2005: ING Discerning Eye, Purchase Prize (John Orbell); The Big Art Challenge, five TV (semi-finalist)

Publications:

2025: Arty magazine Mirrors issue; Subo Art Magazine

2024: Arty magazine Tennessee Williams issue

2023: Ache Magazine ‘Against Confinement’ article and images about Postnatal Psychosis in the ‘I Felt That’ issue