Lucy Beecher Nelson
Lucy Beecher Nelson investigates the social construct of domesticity and her own sense of dislocation within that construct through portraiture and pattern. The artist, her husband, and their daughters serve as models for family portraits around which the artist builds environments out of patterns found in clothing and home textiles. In doing so, she manifests the isolation and disconnection she experiences in the fabrics with which she clothes her family. Pattern acts as a cultural marker of middle-class, American, white suburbia, which the artist utilizes to either camouflage herself or sever herself from her own surroundings. Her subjects wear these patterns as a second skin, like gender roles delineated and imprinted upon the body. Through her exploration of tradition as both an imposition and as something to be embraced free from expectations, she weaves a tapestry of contemporary domestic life that alludes to both its dark and benign aspects. Lucy is based in Falmouth, MA.
