For most of her adult life, Lucy Dundon never imagined she would call herself an artist. Art simply wasn't part of her world.
After nearly thirty years working as a corporate psychologist, including two decades running a business alongside her husband, Lucy's life was shaped by structure, responsibility, and intellectual rigour. When the business was sold in 2021, that chapter closed - and with it came an unexpected pause.
For the first time in decades, Lucy had space to ask a different kind of question: what next?
What she knew was that she wanted something instinctual. Something creative. Something made by hand. Something that felt meaningful in a way her previous work no longer did.
When creativity takes an unexpected form
Lucy's early creative life had been musical rather than visual. Violin and piano filled her childhood and early adulthood, leaving little room for anything else. As life grew busier, even music gradually slipped away.
Art, however, had never entered the picture at all.
That changed when Lucy was introduced to the work of artist Harriet Goodall. Drawn immediately to the material language and sense of place in Harriet's work, Lucy enrolled in Form to Freedom through Take Two - her first ever experience of art-making.
"I absolutely loved it," she recalls. "I quite literally fell down a rabbit hole, and I don't think I've come up since."
What began as curiosity quickly became something more sustaining.
Following Form to Freedom with Harriet Goodall, Lucy found herself drawn to sculpture and weaving, particularly through natural fibres gathered from the environment. She began creating large wall-based works using vines, palm sheaths, and softer plant fibres such as water hyacinth, flag lily, day lily, and rush.
The work was tactile and grounded, deeply connected to the land - but over time, Lucy sensed a limitation.
She could feel the potential in her ideas, but not yet the means to fully realise them. The materials spoke, but the language felt incomplete.
"I could only really take my work so far," she reflects. "I felt frustrated."
What she was craving wasn't simply a new technique — it was a way to move beyond the decorative and into something more layered and intentional.
That longing led Lucy to Connecting: A Philosophy of Making with Lissa Hunter. Hearing Lissa speak on a Take Two podcast became a clear turning point.
Without hesitation, Lucy enrolled.
The course challenged something fundamental: how Lucy saw herself. Before doing Lissa's course, she had been quietly limiting her own practice by thinking of herself solely as a weaver, rather than as an artist.
The shift was subtle, but profound. “The biggest change,” Lucy says, “was learning to think like an artist - not just a maker.”
This change in mindset unlocked everything else.
Through Connecting, Lucy was introduced to new materials and approaches that expanded her creative vocabulary. Mulberry paper, in particular, opened up new possibilities - allowing for softness, layering, and conceptual depth. Wire soon followed, with rusted surfaces bleeding gently through paper and form.
Ideas began arriving unexpectedly, often in the quiet hours.
"I found myself waking up in the middle of the night writing ideas down,” she says, “keeping a sketchbook like Lissa suggested."
But more than any single material, it was the philosophical grounding of the course that stayed with her - including one idea that reshaped how Lucy understood art itself:
"Art is something that happens in the space between the artwork and the viewer."
As Lucy's confidence grew, so did the complexity of her work. Pieces began to hold multiple layers - coiling, paper, compound, paint, varnish - each contributing to texture, depth, and meaning.
What once felt out of reach now felt possible.
With a broader toolkit and a clearer artistic lens, Lucy found she could look at the world differently. Surfaces, forms, and textures became sources of inspiration rather than obstacles.
The practice that emerged felt aligned - instinctual, grounded, and intentional.
Lucy's creative path continues to unfold. She is currently deepening her exploration of natural and earth-based materials through Claire Benn's Out of This Earth, with a growing desire to move away from synthetic polymers altogether.
An exhibition is no longer an abstract idea, but a quiet ambition - one rooted in personal history and memory. She imagines a body of work titled From Garden to Table, inspired by her mother's recollections of her grandfather's post-war vegetable garden.
What began as an uncertain first step into art has become something essential.
Lucy's story is a reminder that creative beginnings don't always arrive early - and that with the right guidance, curiosity can grow into a deeply grounded artistic practice, no matter when it begins.
Connecting with Lissa Hunter supports makers in building a grounded, sustainable practice through prompts, projects and thoughtful guidance. It offers both practical making pathways and deep reflection on intention, material choice and meaning.
With self-paced learning, lifetime access and a supportive online community, students can return to the content over time and continue building work that feels honest, nourishing and connected.