You Are the Sunrise, 2023

watercolour on frosted mylar

18” x 21”

Framed in maple (21” x 24”)

Michaela Lucio explores the residue of histories contained in family photographs and infuses intergenerational relationships with memory and imagination. You are the sunrise captures a moment from the wedding of Lucio's cousin, leaving her the oldest unmarried person in her generation of her family. Three young girls in dresses, the children of Lucio's eldest cousin, dance in the excitement of celebrating their aunt's marriage. Lucio is putting forward joy in these family events and confronting the evolving reality where people choose to delay marriage and childbearing or reject it entirely due to uncertain economic pressures. The girls engulfed in joy, are oblivious to the changing forces that may make their own experience of adulthood and the rites of passage that come with it differ from that of their parents and grandparents' experiences.

Exhibition History

2024- Eye 4 Art 2024: The Thames Art Gallery. (Chatham) Juror: Troy Brooks

2023- Roots: Juried Exhibition The Studio Art Gallery. (Dresden)