“There is no greater pleasure than seeing your work in other places" says Shrewsbury artist who loves colour

Her artwork is a true testament to her love of all things vibrant and tropical. The bold paintings, which feature recurring themes such as food and drink, have all been inspired by time spent living and working in South and Central America.

Lucy is also dedicated to sharing her passion for art with others through her work as a teacher and through her involvement in community projects.

“My work is all about finding beauty, hope and joy in the everyday,” says Lucy, who lives in Shrewsbury.

“It’s dopamine dressing for the walls – I’m all about bringing joyful, life-affirming art to people’s houses.”

Her business is named Shropshire Tropicalia, which she says is a nod to the juxtaposition of the exotic against the county’s quintessentially British rural landscape. 

While monochrome has been all the rage in interior design in recent years, Lucy believes there has been a shift in what people want for their homes.

“I think there is a need for bright, colourful art that brings joy. We’re living in dark times with what’s going on in the world right now and people are looking for art that uplifts them.”

Lucy studied fine art at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. After graduating, she travelled to Lima in Peru where she taught English as a foreign language for two years and met her now husband.

When she returned to the UK, she took a PGCE in secondary education art course at Goldsmiths’ College in London and began teaching art full-time. 

After 13 years living and working in London, Lucy moved to Shropshire, teaching art at Shrewsbury School for six years before stepping down last September to focus more on her art career.

“I love painting – there is no greater pleasure than seeing your work in other places,” she says.

Her own work features a lot of still-life and subjects such as “juicy fruit, verdant plants, kitsch packaging and wild patterns” but she also enjoys painting houses, pets or people portraits along with landscapes en plein air.

One recurring theme is lemons, which for Lucy represent “concentrated light, life and love and an antidote to their opposites”.

“Lemons are on trend at the moment so I’ve struck lucky because I paint a lot of lemons,” says Lucy, who mostly paints using acrylics for speed and intensity of colour.

Her first experience of painting the zesty fruit was at university where her teacher tasked the class to paint fruit with oils.

“I had a Northern Irish tutor who said, ‘Lucy, if it’s possible to paint an urgent-looking lemon, you’ve certainly done that here,” she recalls.

“That stuck with me.”

From that moment ‘urgent lemons’ continued to play a starring role in her work, which often include elements of humour.

During her final year at university, she completed a project on the use of lemons in art looking at Dutch still life artists such as Pieter Claez.

And more recently, she created an installation in a pyramid shaped skylight at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle filled with 1,000 Jif lemons that all lit up yellow, bathing viewers beneath in their lemon glow.

Lucy’s work is currently showcased at The Gallery House Airbnb, located above Wyle Blue bar in Wyle Cop and owned by Belinda Griffiths. The concept behind the flat is that everything is for sale from the cushions and throws to the art on the walls.

“I was discussing possible workshops to do at Wyle Blue and showed Belinda some of my work,” says Lucy.

“She absolutely loved it and phoned me that afternoon with her idea to turn the flat above the bar into Airbnb with the idea that everything in the flat would be for sale – art and her own collection of items from travels in Morocco which she also sells in Wyle Blue.

“I created the logo for the flat and we started decorating it – she wanted my art everywhere because she loves the colour and the personality in my work.

“It really helps create warmth and atmosphere in the flat. Each room is themed – the pomegranate lounge (rich and exotic) the lemon kitchen (fresh and bright) and in the main bedroom are en plein air watercolours I made in Mallorca and vineyards around Shropshire,” explains Lucy.

Another recent project involved her organising and curating the Colour Now ‘25’ exhibition at The Gateway Gallery, a collaboration by five contemporary artists living and working in the West Midlands and Wales who all work with a vibrant and distinctive colour palette.

“I’m passionate about bringing art to the local community,” says Lucy, who also regularly takes on personal commissions.

Among her community work has been leading a project to create a mosaic at Meole Brace C of E Primary School and Nursery.

She worked with all year groups to portray their core values of respect, perseverance and community.

Lucy also designed and project managed the creation of a sculpture comprising giant portable LOVE letters, which was inspired by the work of Bob ‘n’ Roberta Smith and Morag Myerscough and built collaboratively with staff and students and decorated by members of the Shropshire Virtual School in a bespoke workshop.

Last summer, she painted a terracotta beehive, called a skep, at National Trust-run Attingham Park, near Shrewsbury, as part of a project by the Bee Friendly Trust charity to raise the importance of bees.

Her design featured a painting of bees and flowers using her trademark ‘Shropshire Tropicalia’ colours.

She also incorporated a poem by her father Richard Caddel – Songs on the Silence of Bees – which connects the plight of bees with more personal themes of family and loss.

Lucy has also been commissioned to explore the deep-rooted symbolism and geometric significance of Soulton Hall, near Wem, particularly focusing on the enigmatic pomegranate motif.

In the Hill Room, there are scratched plasterwork pomegranates dating from the 1550s.

Teaching remains an incredibly important part of Lucy’s work and she loves encouraging people of all ages to get creative.

During the year, she runs a variety of different workshops for all abilities at venues, including Trinity Centre Meole Brace, Bayston Hill Memorial Hall and Attingham Park.

Participants can use a wide range of mediums such as pencil, pen, ink, soft pastels, watercolours, gouache and acrylics.

Lucy likes to make the classes as accessible as possible, even to people who have been put off art in the past.

“A lot of people ask ‘do you have to be good at art?’ Anybody can do them so people that have never done art before can come along and get really good outcomes.

“I’ve had students who hated art at school and their teacher told them not to bother, but they have produced outstanding results that they are very proud of.

“What I love is that everybody is given the same materials to use and given the same thing to do but they all produce different, individual outcomes.

“It’s been really enjoyable teaching like this because I haven’t got the restrictions of teaching to a syllabus, I can teach what I want to all the time,” explains Lucy.

For more information about Lucy’s workshops, see www.lucycaddel.com or follow lucycaddel_art on Facebook and Instagram