{"id":9340,"date":"2025-07-14T15:09:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T15:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/9340\/"},"modified":"2025-07-14T15:09:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T15:09:04","slug":"painter-lucy-jones-puts-her-life-with-cerebral-palsy-on-canvas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/9340\/","title":{"rendered":"Painter Lucy Jones puts her life with cerebral palsy on canvas"},"content":{"rendered":"

London
\n CNN
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Lucy Jones painted her first nude self-portrait at 50. She was in New York with her husband Peter Leach, she said, when he \u201ctook a picture of my backside. I thought, \u2018Well I don\u2019t look too bad from the back, so maybe I\u2019ll paint it!\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Jones is sitting on a wooden chair the middle of a white-washed gallery space, surrounded by a collection of her own works spanning decades for the opening of a new self-portraiture show in London. While the piece in question, \u201cBeing 50,\u201d is absent from the exhibition it is striking enough to remember off by heart: an inky black canvas split in two, with Jones\u2019 tilted gait rendered nude in two separate images.\n <\/p>\n

\n The study of the artist\u2019s front is flat and na\u00efvely painted \u2014 her right arm bent backwards at an awkward right angle. (Jones was diagnosed with cerebral palsy \u2014 a lifelong brain disorder that permanently affects body movement and muscle coordination \u2014 as a young infant.) Her back profile, however, is more elegantly shaded with her spine gently curved to the left, hips following. An image of a wooden cane pokes up from the bottom to divide the painting while a floating constellation of deviled eggs looms above her head \u2014 a nod to menopause and losing her fertility.\n <\/p>\n

\"Jones'<\/p>\n

\n Painting nude is not Jones\u2019 usual approach to documenting her physical form. In fact, after her 50th portrait, she didn\u2019t create another one until sixteen years later. Why? Because she was finally a pensioner. \u201cLucky me!\u201d Jones laughed, as she spoke with CNN in the gallery. \u201cAt last, I\u2019ve made it.\u201d She was still painting herself, however \u2014 on large canvases with a fearless approach to color. These are the reflections of Jones we glimpse in the show, who despite her obvious talent \u201cdidn\u2019t really expect anybody to ever be interested in (my) self portraits,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it was a way for me to keep drawing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n In \u201ctotally, completely, and absolutely Lucy Jones,\u201d the artists\u2019 physical disability is rendered in bright, brash Hockney-esque colors and confident, expressionist brush strokes. \u201cMost art historically never mentions disability,\u201d said Jones. \u201cBut I\u2019ve been really quite interested to bring that onto the canvas. And over the years I think I have.\u201d Her walking frame and cane are repeating motifs, as are backwards words and sentences \u2014 a nod to her invisible struggle with dyslexia, and an attempt at sharing that experience with her viewers. \u201cI usually do mirror writing on the painting to make it awkward for the audience to decipher it,\u201d she explained. She often appears with stiff, distorted hands. Hands, Jones said, are the window in the soul. \u201cThey express so much of the person,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Jones\u2019 wit shows through in the titles of her artworks, which often refer to her experience as a person living with disabilities. In \u201cIt\u2019s a Long Way to the Bottom of this Canvas\u201d (2000), Jones is suspended in the top right corner, her glasses and cane woefully mid-flight down the painting. \u201cIt could be a metaphor for life,\u201d she said. \u201cOr for me, walking, anywhere. It\u2019s a long way.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n There\u2019s a sardonic edge slicing through the work. The title of her 2018 piece \u201cWith a Handicap like Yours\u2026\u201d, is lifted verbatim from a conversation Jones once had with a doctor who, after Jones complained of her lack of dexterity, was reluctant to give the artist physiotherapy for her hand. In Jones\u2019 mind, the phrase also translated to \u2018What do you expect?\u2019\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHe was a lovely doctor, I\u2019m not criticizing,\u201d she conceded. \u201cBut it was an old-fashioned expression. I wanted to poke that a little bit.\u201d In the work, Jones is on the brink of an eye roll, her face angled towards the viewer in an exhausted stare. As a retort, she painted a third hand reaching into the painting \u2014 a surrealist quip. \u201c(My art) gets more and more confrontational because I want to comment to the world and make them think about disability and different types of disability,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n The earliest work in the show dates back to 1996, when Jones could work on larger, more monumental pieces and stand for longer periods of time. \u201cThe idea of standing doesn\u2019t appeal to me anymore,\u201d she laughed. Now, the artist paints on her knees, which has meant downsizing her canvases to ensure she can \u201cstill reach the top.\u201d The discomfort from being on her feet means Jones must also now paint her self-portraits from photographs, instead of in front of the mirror.\n <\/p>\n

\n She called Matthew Flowers, the British art dealer and managing director of Flowers Gallery, \u201cbrave\u201d for staging her show. Not just because it centers someone like Jones so audaciously, but because Flowers rebukes the industry\u2019s perpetual appetite for novelty and constant creation. \u201cThey\u2019re not all new paintings,\u201d the artist said. \u201cMost of them go back a long time.\u201d For Jones, creating an entire new body of work for a gallery show, when a single painting takes her three months, is unthinkable.\n <\/p>\n

\n Her newest piece, created this year, is the third in her age-based trilogy, marking the artist at 70. The work shows a self-portrait of Jones on all fours looking up at the viewer, while in the top right corner is a clipping from a leaflet attributed to The Centre for Spastic Children in Cheyne Walk. On the leaflet, a photograph of Jones shows her again on her hands and knees \u2014 this time at three years old, learning to crawl for the first time. Jones does not see the parallel as a melancholy one. Seventy is its own milestone, and many surprising, wonderful things have happened in between, she said. For Jones, reaching this point \u201cis a shock\u201d because \u201cI didn\u2019t realize that with cerebral palsy you deteriorate. And let me tell you, you do. Which is rubbish, actually. Complete rubbish.\u201d What age might she like to commemorate next, 99? \u201c99!\u201d She laughed. \u201cPaint myself in a coffin or something.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201ctotally, completely, and absolutely Lucy Jones\u201d runs until August at the Flowers Gallery in Mayfair, London.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Lucy Jones painted her first nude self-portrait at 50. She was in New York with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-9340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}