May Art Show Includes Watercolors and Ink Drawings
Lucy “Clare” Spooner lives in New York City, travels frequently to Virginia, and spends her summers in the south of France – all while making a living as a painter working in watercolor and oil. She also accepts commissions for custom paintings and makes live drawings at events.
Her paintings of landscapes, still lifes, figures, flowers and wildlife, will be on display in RWC’s Gallery Hall for the month of May and the show is open to the local community. The show is called, “Virginia Wildlife: a series of drawings & watercolors.”
Born in Houston, Spooner moved with her family to Saudi Arabia when she was two months old and lived there for about eight years. She moved to Virginia when she was 8 and lived in Williamsburg until she went to college at UVA.
“The Northern Neck has always held a special place in my heart,” she said. “My mom’s uncle had a place in Tappahannock, and she went there in the summer. Now, when my mom and I want to take a day trip from Williamsburg, we go to Tappahannock or Irvington.”
In fact, Spooner has shown her work for the last few years at the Arts in the Middle Fine Arts Festival in Urbanna. That’s where Director of Life Enrichment Amy Lewis found her and invited her to be a featured artist at RWC.
“I made up a new series for the RWC show,” Spooner said. “These are mostly drawings in black sumi ink – Japanese calligraphy ink. I’ll have watercolors, too – 75 or 80 pieces all together, but most are pretty small. It [The Gallery Hall] is a lot of wall space to cover.”
Spooner moved to New York right after her college graduation in 2014 and never looked back.
“I love the city,” she said. “It’s so exciting. My friends are here and it’s full of the arts. Culture is at your fingertips. I live in a very charming, quiet neighborhood. It’s in Manhattan – but in the West Village, an old artist haunt.”
She moved to the city to work in interior design and did that for five years, while painting nights and weekends. She found she was selling her paintings “without even really trying,” and soon was making more from her art than her day job.
“I was itching to make a change, so I saved my babysitting money, sublet my apartment and took myself to the south of France,” she said.
Spooner attended the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing in Aix-en-Provence, France and says it changed her life.
“I have a residency with the school, and this will be my third summer going to the south of France,” she said. “I paint all day, every day. I focus on painting in the landscape without thinking about everyday life distractions like email, marketing, my website, or planning for art fairs. I write about 20 emails all summer. It’s so luxurious in that way.”
One email she does send in the summer is her “Artsy Bible Study” emails, which consist of pairings of Master paintings with corresponding biblical verses, that goes out to her mailing list every Monday.
You can learn more about Spooner’s email lists and her art at lucyclarespooner.com
RWC will host an artist reception with Clare Spooner at 4:30-6:30 p.m. on May 1 in the Atrium that is free and open to the community.
The art exhibition is open to all 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily throughout May in Rappahannock Westminster-Canterbury’s Gallery Hall.
