Tracey Fletcher King

I finally finished this piece last week, and have been busy getting scans and doing five million other things, but of course none of those involved updating this or working out what the next project will be. I have a few drawings on the go and would like to get in and finish them, but I have also been getting back to some collage which has been very satisfying. I think I am finding the restrictions for exhibitions to be a bit offputting at the moment. The Botanic Art Society has another exhibition coming up in a few months and we are completing works based on plants from the Redcliffe Botanic Gardens. I have one piece completed, but I have to complete another and am just not finding the plants talking to me. I am finding that I have ideas in my head about what I would like to tackle, but they just don't fit in with the schedule for exhibitions like this, and when the amount of time that you have is limited it is very hard to get motivated to complete work for things that don't excite you.

Working on projects that I have on the go and revisiting some collage has been fun and while I had forgotten some of the basics, it is nice to be able to play with images a bit more. I think that Botanic Art is something that I really love, but when you don't get the time and opportunity to just follow what is inspiring you it can feel very different. My antidote to that has been to get back to using paint and colour to be expressive, to play with my little wheel of waterpaints instead of using the grown up ones and delving into my draw of papers and ephemera, and to pretend there isn't a deadline looming. I will have to face up to it soon enough and in the mean time I am thinking some play is in order.