Side Hustle
Issy Carey mixes her passions with a creative flair
GoDuke The Magazine
This story originally appeared in the 14.3 Issue of GoDuke the Magazine -- October 2022.
Sports are a microcosm of life. There are peaks and valleys in every single game let alone throughout an athlete’s career. For many, finding that constant outside of the competitive arena is crucial for the mental and emotional well-being.
For Duke field hockey’s Issy Carey, her constant is creating art.
Art and sports are similar for Carey — they both are windows into a person’s spirit. And if you look closely the sophomore forward is showing you her true self through both. In sports, you see the physical strength, incredible skill and the raw emotion. The elation of scoring a goal or the devastation as victory slips away, to pure physical exhaustion. It’s there for everyone to see.
Art, for Carey, is just as honest. But this time the emotions are communicated on canvas through colors, brush strokes and images. The constant being that these emotions witnessed on the turf and the canvas are truthful, unfiltered and on full display. It might not always be the most comfortable or beautiful experience, but it is most certainly real in a society where pictures are often filtered and edited.
“That has been something I’ve come to learn is that art doesn’t have to be beautiful for it be truthful,” said Carey. “Art for me is vulnerability. It’s a way that you show yourself and I also think it’s what we do with sport. You’re showing your talents. You’re showing all that you’re capable of. It’s a very vulnerable thing. And sport is very creative in that way too."
Carey credits a portion of her evolving views of art in recent years to Francis Bacon, whom she has gone to as an inspiration. An Irish-born figurative painter, Bacon is known for his raw and unsettling imagery, a trait that impacted Carey.
“If you look at his work, you’ll cringe,” Carey said. “It’s really hard to look at some of it, but if you look further and you look into the colors and the technique he uses and how he portrays emotion through colors and the way he paints, the technique that he paints in, it is quite incredible.”
While her thoughts about art have grown and changed, the love of creating it has always been a part of Carey’s life. She discovered she had a knack for drawing at an early age. She did not care to color within the lines — a trait you’ll see to this day in her works — but sketching made her happy.
“I was always very hyper and sporty as a kid, so it was my downtime,” Carey said. “People always found it surprising because I was always moving around and was always wanting to play sport or be outside. But if they needed me to be still, (they could give) me a sketchbook and a pencil and I (could) sit there for hours and be completely locked into it.”
She was talented enough at an early age to garner praise for her drawing, so naturally she continued. Art became her outlet, her way to turn off and recharge.
“As I got a little bit older, we moved countries and I moved schools a fair bit and it became very much like a coping mechanism,” Carey said. “I had an iPod Nano and I used to put my earphones in, and I used to just draw if we were on a plane or in a car. Wherever we were and if there was downtime, I had to be doing something and it was drawing.”
And a few years later it developed into a way to manage change in her life and then years later it provided her a revenue stream.
In fact, her recent painting of former Duke men’s basketball star Wendell Moore Jr. dunking hangs in the office of Duke’s vice president and director of athletics Nina King. A representation of Moore’s strength and skill painted through the eyes of Carey proved to be the perfect representation of Duke Athletics, so King purchased it from Carey to adorn the wall of her office.
After exposure to art classes from an early age through her schooling in England, Carey started to hone her craft while going to school in Hong Kong when she was 10 or 11. Surrounded by amazing architecture, Carey started an interest in the subject from a visual perspective. The opportunity granted by the school to develop her skills outside of the standard art class allowed it to become more than a hobby for Carey.
“You could go into class and be a normal student and get through the class, but they also gave us a lot more special attention if you were really interested in that. And this school had amazing architecture. It was a brand new building and I started an interest in (drawing) this architecture and we would sit around the school and draw all the architectural components of this building. From there on, art became a very specialized thing.”
As her art started to take on more meaning in her life, she continued to excel athletically. Back in England for secondary school, she climbed the ranks within England’s national team program, playing for the U-16 England team from 2016-17, the U-18 squad from 2017-19 and for the Surbiton Ladies First Team from 2017-20.
However, like most athletes, Carey could not escape the physical setback of major injury. That is where art stepped in and carried Carey through a challenging time. Art allowed her to turn the energy she exerted on the field into a personal and powerful art project.
When Carey suffered a “really terrible” ankle injury, her art class coincidentally was moving into a new project. That is when her professor suggested she use her injury and pain — both physical and emotional — as the inspiration. With the encouragement of her teachers, she committed to using her paint and brushes to work through the pain.
“I was able to delve into (my art) in a way that I would have never thought about doing before and I used my injury and pain and sport and all of this stuff to create art and honestly get me through that injury in a much more productive and effective way than if I hadn’t had art there,” Carey said about coping with her first major injury.
Her art came to the rescue again this past spring at Duke when she had shoulder surgery, keeping her out of field hockey training. So again, she turned to the constant in her life and took on another big art project — this one landed in King’s office.
The figurative motion piece of Moore wasn’t the only special project Carey took on, though.
The other one blended two of her loves — Duke field hockey and art. The Blue Devils broke ground over the summer on the renovations for a new team room and locker room. Needing unique branding that was personal to the team, Carey stepped up and with input from teammates created a striking image of a Duke field hockey player surrounded words that represent the values of the program.
Phrases such as Duke True, Authentic, Control The Controllables and Relentless are among many that await the Blue Devils each time they walk into the room. They serve as a constant reminder of how the team needs to approach every day. And to know it came from the hands of one of their own only compounds the strength of the message now and for the future.
Forced to take time away from the field because of injuries over the course of her athletic career, Carey explored other areas of creativity within her art. She always loved being on a ladder and working on big portraits and figurative images, but in her gap year of coaching field hockey and being a commissioned artist Carey found the more abstract painting intriguing. She enjoyed playing with colors and fragmentation, something she had done little of throughout her art career, and Carey found success in her ventures in the new format.
It started when the family of former Blue Devil and club teammate Darcy Bourne started to redecorate their living room with a particular color scheme, and they sought out Carey to put the final addition to the room with a large three-piece abstract painting.
“From there it continued,” Carey said about her side hustle. “People wanting presents, people wanting an abstract piece for a room. I was lucky I kind of had some buzz around it and people just asked and asked and I had a bit of a stream so that was nice.”
Carey’s art really developed during her final two to three years at her secondary school. She utilized both the freedom to do “whatever I wanted” granted by her teacher Mr. McIllwaine as well as the forced time away from the field hockey field because of injuries to evolve as an artist.
Now back on the field hockey turf after nearly 18 months away from competitive action, Carey is moving forward and hitting her stride for the Blue Devils. She has played in all 13 games this season, including seven starting assignments, and leads the Duke attack with seven goals, including five in the past four games. She most recently recorded her first hat trick as a Blue Devil as Duke cruised past Richmond, 8-1.
As busy as ever balancing the demands of being a Division I student-athlete — practice, weight training and school — Carey continues to lean on her art to decompress and re-charge mentally and emotionally. She cherishes the time she gets to create art for herself and admits moving forward she would love art to be a large part of her life personally and professionally.
“I think it will be a side hustle until I quiet down with a ‘proper’ job,” Carey said. “I think eventually I’d love to create art for my house and for my friends and family when I’m older. My main kind of goal is to use my illustrative or creative skills in a professional career. The stuff that I’ve been doing for Duke where I’ve been able to create art and have it digitized — I want to find a way to use my creativity and not to have it just be an outlet but be my profession.”
Fortunately for Duke, the time for her to move on to her next chapter is still a few years down the road. So, until that time comes, make your way to Williams Field at Jack Katz Stadium on East Campus or to a Duke art studio for further understanding of Issy Carey the athlete, the artist and the person.
Dedicated to sharing the stories of Duke student-athletes, present and past, GoDuke The Magazine is published for Duke Athletics by LEARFIELD with editorial offices at 3100 Tower Blvd., Suite 404, Durham, NC 27707. To subscribe, join the Iron Dukes or call 336-831-0767.