Stephanie Lucchese

When it is Too Dark to See I Watch Anyhow

Jackson's Art Prize 2025
Oil, Cold Wax
Linen
162.5 x 238.8 cm

“An interest in fiction, imagination and mystery motivates my practice. If imagination is an extension of this world into another, can there be a place where everything is edible? I attempt to place the use of symbolic language in a contemporary context saturated with images, I paint forms, fruits, plants and figures that interact in constant movement, devouring themselves as time remains still. The body serving as plate, frame or dinner. Painting is a gateway to nostalgia. To preserve an elusive quality in my work I use two main methods. Drawing without preconceived ideas or plans and writing snippets of disconnected fiction that I later discard. Bits of personal experience seep into an invented realm in the form of iconography. I repeat certain elements such as open fruit or bowls of liquid. As these symbols and their meanings dissolve, my interest lies not in ideas but in repetition. Because I work from drawings to paintings with no photographic references, I achieve an incoherent light of artificial quality. Akin to theater spotlights, it establishes these images as fictional. I’m inspired by medieval tapestries, the drama of religious art, the logical systems of sci-fi, love songs, magic and history.”