About Lucy Raverat
Early Years — The World As It Appeared to Me
In the 1970s my work was rooted in the everyday. I painted the small, unremarkable moments that made up my life — friends, rooms, streets, events, fragments of experience caught as they unfolded. The figurative work was direct, observational, almost diaristic. It was a way of saying: this happened, I was here — this is what the world looked like from where I stood. Looking back now, I see that those early paintings form the outer layer of a journey that would eventually move inward.
Over the years my work changed — slowly, then all at once. The recognizable world dissolved. The surface of things no longer interested me. Shapes broke open, colours became forces, lines became events. What had been figurative grew restless and unstable, until the only honest thing left was the energy itself. The paintings became vast, cosmic, chaotic. They felt less like something I was making and more like something moving through me. I could no longer say I was “in control.” I was participating in a process that was using me as its instrument. I didn’t have the language for this at the time. I only knew that I had crossed a threshold.
Descent Into the Interior
The Spiritual Turn — The Amazon
In 2010 I travelled to the Amazon. I wasn’t seeking visions; I wasn't looking for meaning. But the experience opened a door I didn’t know I had. During a ceremony I had an intense, inexplicable intuition — that one of the caretakers present embodied a presence that resonated with the world of contemporary art and recognition. Not literally a person I knew, but a symbolic gatekeeper. Only later did I understand: this figure represented recognition, threshold, permission, the possibility of being seen. It was the archetype of the gatekeeper. Not an individual — but an energy. The message wasn’t “seek this person.”
It was: the same force that gives you the images will also guide their path. Trust that. That moment changed me. It marked the beginning of a long spiritual search — and a slow surrender. The paintings continued — but with a new awareness: I was not the only author involved.
Jung — Discovering the Language I Had Always Lacked
More recently I encountered the work of Carl Jung. To my astonishment, I realised that many of the paintings I had made decades before were visual expressions of what he describes — archetypes, shadow forms, cosmic structures, eruptions of the unconscious, symbolic fields charged with psychological energy. For years I had been painting inner weather systems without knowing their names. The work was a form of individuation long before I even understood the concept. My paintings are not illustrations of Jung — they precede him in my life. But his writing gives a clear mirror to what has been happening all along: a psyche making itself visible through image.
The Château — A Conversation With Time
In 2022, I held an exhibition in a ruined château — a silent, majestic carcass of stone and memory. My paintings hung in rooms where nature was slowly reclaiming the architecture. The place was half sanctuary, half collapse. Something about that setting made sense. The cosmic turbulence of the work met the crumbling material world. The inner and outer ruin spoke to one another. It was one of the rare moments where my work felt “placed” rather than simply displayed — as if the environment and the paintings were participating in the same long story of transformation.
Venice — An Invitation and a Turning Point
Around this time I was contacted by organizers connected to the Venice Biennale and invited to show work in a palazzo during the exhibition period. They responded strongly to my projects and expressed real enthusiasm. But when the conditions of participation became clear, I realised that it was not the right path. I declined. It was not rejection — it was recognition of something else: I do not want my work to enter the world through compromise or transaction. It must appear in its own way, in its own time. That moment reinforced what the Amazon had already taught me. My task is to make the work. The rest is not mine to orchestrate.
The Archive — A Life Brought Into View
Now, at last, the work is gathered here. Decades of painting — from the figurative beginnings to the vast abstract fields of the present — assembled without hierarchy or strategy. This is not a portfolio. It is a life in images. A record of consciousness unfolding. A long correspondence with the unseen. I have no desire to persuade, to promote, or to advertise. The archive exists simply because the work exists. If it calls to someone, it will be found.
Closing — Let the Work Do the Talking
“Evidence of My Existence” is exactly what it says. These paintings are the traces left by a journey I never planned, guided by forces I don’t fully understand. They are the map of a life lived through the image — energetic, chaotic, cosmic, intimate, and ultimately mysterious. I trust that the work will reach whoever needs to see it. My task is complete the moment the image is made. The rest belongs to the world.