Tracey Levett Art Essence 2019 London Studio Visit

Tracey Levett welcomed us into her Sydney studio to capture her creations. Tracey portrays a tremendous spirit and observation of life through her paintings. Our video shows Tracey bringing her passion to life as she paints. And while we grab every detail of her work behind the pieces.

To prepare for an upcoming art exhibition in London, Tracey describes her thoughts, passion, and real life experience. We witness her strike a bare canvas with the first strokes, and it’s transformation into a finished piece of colour and brush strokes that will inspire art lovers.

Hi I’m Tracey Levett this is my studio, it’s really my little world where I like to come and work and spend time. Before I paint I like to have a little bit of quiet time. Sometimes I read, sometimes I meditate but that quiet time is really important. It helps me to get in a place where the work can flow. It’s become an essential part of my practice and it definitely makes a lot of difference.

When I’m starting a new canvas I usually like to take a big brush and just go for it, I try and get rid of that white with lots of loose washy paint and make lots of beautiful marks. This can often be the most fun this part of the painting and it can also be where you make the most exciting brushstrokes.

It seems to me that painting is a lot like dancing, step in we put a mark on the canvas you step back and you take a look so it’s this kind of dance between intuition and a little bit of analytical intellect but I try and keep my mind out of things as much as I can and try and really just dance in and out with the intuition.

So it’s a beautiful process and I can feel the energy flowing through me when I’m doing it. If I feel that energy start to dissipate I know it’s time to stop.

Painting flowers have been an interesting subject for me because I started painting flowers when I first started painting. But in the last few years I’ve come back to painting flowers. For me, flowers are a great subject
because I can be really relaxed and loose with them and it gives me lots of opportunities also to work with line, which I love.

Lots of artists as we know painted them so that’s been the botanical artist but then there are the other artists who have painted flowers and use them as a metaphor for life. And that’s understandable because flowers come seemingly out of nowhere, they bloom for a very short while and it’s kind of like us it’s like life, we are here we bloom hopefully while we’re here we have a little time on earth and then before you know we’ve gone back to wherever we came from I also feel that flowers like us human beings, they’re like little incarnations of the divine. I think there’s something very sacred about flowers.

I was trying to understand from a very young age what life is all about, why we’re here and so that’s also the theme that runs through all my work, I’m really interested in painting something that’s important maybe that makes people stop and think about their life. Everybody’s so busy especially with all our technology and so engaged that you actually never stop to think about things so you just go from one thing to the next.

So in my art I have incorporated two things that I love, philosophy and beauty. Because I think beauty also has the power to transform us. With life often we’re trying to make sense of everything but it’s like we’re looking through a pinhole trying to see the universe. We can only explore life from where we are with what we can see. Art’s the same thing. It’s such a big subject, so you have to pick a nice spot and maybe explore that area. Life is a mystery and art is a mystery. There’s so many parallels.

So this exhibition which I’ve called “Essence” I’ve tried to tap into that essential quality of things and of people of us of life. And I hope that when you stand in front of the paintings you can feel the feeling that I felt when I was creating the work. When I’m working I can feel that energy flowing through me. And I think if you could take a little bit of time you might feel that energy wash over you.

Well I hope you enjoy my work.It’s very precious to me and hopefully it will give you something.

Tracey Levett