INSPIRED BY HER PARENT’S ART BOOKS and the occasional visits to London galleries when she was growing up, Lucy McKie decided early on that she was going to be a full-time artist. In hindsight, she realises it was quite the leap of faith as she didn’t have a plan B. Perhaps this meant that she had to make it work. Because although there isn’t a set route to becoming a professional artist, hard work, perseverance and, crucially, learning to accept rejection means she made it her career. Today, she works from a small studio space in her Yorkshire home and credits entering open exhibitions and becoming a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in giving her faith in her work, now bolstered by the fact that her portraits and still life paintings are in collections all over the world.
Growing up, we lived in the countryside in Yorkshire but would have occasional trips to London and sometimes visit galleries.
These visits were really important, especially in the pre-internet days as I could see paintings in the flesh, which made the idea of actually being a painter feel a bit more real. I think these trips made me very
