Tracy Mayfield

Having completed my Art A-level and completing a year at Nottingham Trent University on a textile design degree I've been able to develop my work using colour and texture as my main focus.

My work hugely influenced by the Abstract Expressionists of the 1940s and 50s. By using colour and shape to express emotion and feeling, they were pioneers in modern art. My main influences come from artists such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Norman and Mark Tobey. Their revolutionary ideas and methods of painting solid blocks of colour to stimulate and question the very essence of "What is Art?" is something that I can relate to with my own work. Their work was used to express emotion and went against the norm and I find this whole argument over what can be classed as art as intriguing and thought provoking.

The ideas behind my work involve using contrasting colours to create interesting, abstract pieces. I involve myself fully into each piece, making the frames, stretching the canvas, preparing the canvas ready to paint. I feel that the painting gets my full attention and becomes a unique, individual piece.

I am not inspired by any one thing. I will often look at different combinations of colour and texture, whether it's in nature or synthetic and wonder "Would that work as a painting?" or "How can I incorporate this into my work?" Because my paintings are based on how
I feel at that particular time I experiment with colours and will layer different ideas until I am happy.

I will often have a concept in my head and will test that it works on canvas, when I am happy I will work with the colours, usually only limited to about 2 or 3 and work with each brush stroke to make sure that the colours blend together. Sometimes a painting will be
completed in an hour sometimes a few days, I will continue to work with the painting until I am happy with how the colours have blended, the way the painting looks and then I can move onto the next stage; which is embellishing the canvas with beadwork, and sometimes threads. I feel that this gives each canvas a different side to it, by combining the bold and brash with delicate and subtle. I hope that the pieces I create are thought provoking and inspiring.

Insomnia II is a second version of a smaller piece that I have developed further. The original piece didn't have any embellishment.

My work can be seen at www.paintedghost.co.uk, my other pieces vary from photography and canvas work to digital media based images.

Contact:

E: paintedghost@gmail.com W: www.paintedghost.co.uk