BIO
Lucy Pass (b. 1986) is a self-taught painter currently living and working in Cheltenham, UK. Her figurative, mixed-media pieces are an intentional rejection of a single style or method, combining distinct and contrasting parts to capture the messy reality of human experience.
She appeared on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2019 which sparked a complete re-evaluation of her practice and a move away from traditional portraiture, driving her to intensively explore, expand and evolve her creative process over the following years. As a result she deepened her understanding of what it means to create art and the importance it has on her personal well-being – finding peace and flow in the “doing” has just as much importance as the expression in the final artwork, as does sharing the work and finding connection with the viewer.
Pass’ work is in private collections worldwide and she has exhibited alongside renowned artists across the UK and internationally. Her work has been shortlisted for multiple prizes and was awarded first prize in both The British Art Prize in 2023 and The Guildford House Open in 2024. Her first solo exhibition at Guildford House Gallery in 2025 served as a major catalyst, sparking her most active exhibiting year in 2026 and earning features in multiple contemporary art publications.
STATEMENT
Pass’s work combines representational and abstract elements to explore the things that lie deep within us – to piece together what it is to be human and give a physical shape to our endless internal soup of emotion.
She combines a range of mediums, techniques and contrasting visual languages to create a deliberate tension within her deconstructed portraits. Half formed faces and human fragments hang in space, punctuated by a language of expressive marks, shapes and shocks of colour. It’s unclear whether things are falling apart or piecing themselves together and so much is stripped back that the redacted elements take on power – it becomes as much about what you can't see as what you can, inviting the viewer to ask questions and fill in the blanks.
Fascinated by how her work is read by others, Pass offers it up without forced narratives, leaving the viewer freedom to explore on their own terms and through the lens of their own lived experiences. Her dynamic portraits are a conversation between chaos and clarity, beauty and unease, absence and addition; inviting introspective curiosity and collective therapy. She views her work as an outstretched hand in the hope of finding quiet connection and mutual understanding in an infinitely confusing world.