LUCINDA ROGERS
RIGHT Discover the
Birchwoods at JFK
Airport, ink, crayon
and gouache on
paper, 65x50cm
OPPOSITE PAGE
Houston Street
from Lafayette
Street Garage,
ink, crayon and
gouache on paper,
48x61cmI
t turned out it was a doubly strange
and poignant day to be talking to
the acclaimed illustrator Lucinda
Rogers about her latest project.
For starters, when we arranged to
meet in a canal-side café around the
corner from her East London studio to
discuss her new crowd-funded book
of drawings of New York, neither of
us had clocked the fact that we were
doing so on a date that will forever
be etched into that city’s history:
September 11th.
Not only that but Lucinda has
barely settled down with her coffee
when she also discovers that one of
her key early inspirations for the
project has just died. The Wiltshire-
born illustrator made her first trip to
New York in 1988, intoxicated before
she arrived like thousands of others
on a cocktail of imagery drawn from
art, film, television and photography.
“I think it is quite romantic,” she says.
“It’s an extraordinary thing that we
know this city so incredibly well,
whereas if I said to you, ‘what does
Canberra look like?’, would you
immediately conjure that up?”
One key influence, she notes, was
the legendary Swiss photographer
and creator of the iconic 1958
photobook The Americans, Robert
Frank. Unbeknownst to Lucinda, he had died two days
previously. She appears genuinely moved by the news.
“He was such a huge influence and I always think of him
most in terms of composition. I had all of his images of
New York in my head and, when I got there, I saw them
all in three dimensions.”
After that first brief visit to New York, Lucinda says a
switch flicked in her head and she knew she wanted to
draw the city. She returned in earnest in 1990, staying for
three months and finding herself drawn to the “interesting
juxtapositions” alive on every street corner, an interesting
shop sign set off by a funny little building.Lucinda begins each drawing with preliminary sketching
using water-based coloured crayons before more emphatic
lines are drawn over this with dip pens, brushes and Higgins
inks – the only brand she is particular about. Surprisingly,
the thicker black lines that surround the focal points are
not added later for emphasis, but rather laid down early to
provide “the key to the picture”. Select flashes of colour
are then applied with watercolour or gouache.
One of the many brilliant aspects to Lucinda’s art is
the economy of marks. She can spend up to 12 hours
on a single drawing, yet each composition never feels
over-worked. The restless energy of the city is captured
Artists & Illustrators 23