CONSTANT MUSE
WHEN LUCY MCEACHERN IS NOT WORKING ON HER FAMILY’S FARM IN VICTORIA’S WEST, SHE CAN BE FOUND SCULPTING LIFE-SIZED BIRDS FROM BRONZE.
When she’s not running cattle on her family’s Victorian farm, sculptor Lucy Mceachern makes bronze birds.
IT’S THE RANDOM ENCOUNTERS that Lucy Mceachern loves as she rides her stock horse mare Fenella down the stone-walled laneways, past the long corridors of trees, and out across the vast grasslands while mustering her sleek brown and white cattle. Lucy runs 200 Hereford breeders here on Wingiel, the 4000-hectare property in western Victoria she shares with her younger brother James and their mother Kate. Today she’s keeping an eye on the languid procession ahead, while also scanning the skies for her other passion — birds. Thirty-seven-year-old Lucy is an acclaimed sculptor whose life-size bronze birds have won numerous awards, and are held in private collections and galleries in Australia and overseas. She’s exhibited in the prestigious Birds in Art exhibition in Wausau, USA, and last year was one of 92 artists accepted from 900 applicants. Her love of birds, she says, was passed down partly from her late father, Clive, and partly from her experiences growing up at Wingiel. “In Dad’s childhood he raised turkeys, guinea fowl, geese and chickens,” says Lucy. “Mum and I have always done the stockwork on the horses at Wingiel, and at lunchtime we’ll sit together and compare what birds we’ve seen that day.” Wingiel, located in the farming district of Wingeel 55 kilometres west of Geelong, provides a rich habitat for all kinds of birds. There is a lake and wetland area, and Lucy’s family have invested a lot into revegetating the property. “We have brolgas and wedgies that nest on the farm. We’ve been doing a lot of tree planting since we’ve had Wingiel so the bird population has increased a huge amount,” Lucy says. “There are rosellas and crested pigeons, and on the lake, ducks, moorhens and little sandpipers. There are a lot more waterbirds now that we have more reeds.” Lucy spent her early years in the Western District near Camperdown where her parents ran Ardno Hereford stud. >
One of Australia’s oldest and most prominent Hereford studs, it was established by Lucy’s grandfather in 1936. When the family sold the Ardno property in 2015, she kept some cows and heifers to start her own stud. Just over six years ago Lucy bought Tarawil, a neighbouring 325-hectare property, where she lives with staghounds Lotti and Sylvia, an elderly Jack Russell called Alice, her stock horses, and two Clydesdale cross hunters Howqua and Tambo. It’s a far cry from sculpting in the hallway of her cottage on Wingiel. She now has a purpose-built studio alongside the Tarawil house and regularly shows her own work and holds group exhibitions. It’s here that many of her sculptures are displayed, along with works in progress, such as a clay mould of Australia’s smallest falcon, the nankeen kestrel. Others, including a life-size wedge-tailed eagle and a powerful owl sit atop rust-coloured plinths in the garden, surrounded by roses, swathes of pigface and drought-tolerant plants. “I was living in the farm cottage but had been thinking of moving to Geelong. Dad said, ‘You don’t belong in town with your dogs and horses!’ This property was once a big paddock of Barunah Plains and the paddock was called Spring Run, so Spring Run is what I’ve named my Hereford stud. There are leased crops here at the moment but by 2020 I will be running it myself and will have the cows here, too.” At school Lucy studied art and ceramics, but it was on a Year 11 excursion to a foundry that she discovered bronze sculpture. She went on to do a Bachelor of Fine Arts Ceramics and Sculpture at Monash University and the subject she was most drawn to was a familiar one. “At university I did a series of polo ponies in bronze as I was working as a polo groom.” From there, birds were a natural progression. “It’s the shapes and personalities of different birds that get me excited, and that will dictate what I am going to make,” Lucy adds. “I look at how feathers meet and the angle of the wing. I get more excited about the position that best describes the bird, and they all have very different personalities. A wood duck is very different to a whistling duck…” While the overall shape of the bird is essential, Lucy says the eyes, facial features and the feet get the most detail. “The way they look is most important — an owl is more inquisitive, the magpie is on a mission.” Each bronze piece is produced in a foundry in limited editions of 25, or 12 for larger installation sculptures. Travel is the perfect opportunity to see her subjects in their natural environment and Lucy doesn’t limit herself to Australia. She’s been as far as the Galapagos and Africa to observe birds, such as the flamingo and the albatross, and her trips have sometimes taken her further afield than planned. “I wanted to see the endangered palm cockatoo in the Northern Territory, but ended up seeing it in Miami.” But just as often it’s the birds she sees while mustering cattle that thrill her the most. “The spoonbill is one of my favourites, along with the yellow-tailed cockies. Every time they fly past you just stop in your tracks to watch them.” For more information about Lucy’s sculptures or to make an appointment to see the studio, visit lucymceachern.com