Beyond The Canvas

‍ ‍ A little memory from ‘The Colours of Nature’ Exhibition, Walkers Fine Art, Farndon, Cheshire

On Art, Connection & Meaning

This week, I returned to Farndon. Not to hang work this time, but to collect remaining pieces after the exhibition.

It has been lovely to have the opportunity to meet and spend time with other talented artists also exhibiting. There is something quite special about a community where people are showing up, creating, making and putting their art into the world. The artworks have all been on display for several weeks, and it got me reflecting on what happens when a painting leaves the studio and enters a space where it can be seen.

It is an interesting process. Until that point, the paintings are like a relationship between me and the canvas. They evolve as I choose the composition, develop the layers, feel the final piece emerge. They all start with a ‘Moment of Noticing’, they all start with their own story, and then become a process of making.

At some point in the painting's journey, I have to decide that it is finished enough to let it go. (Some paintings I’m still not quite able to let go of!) But once it's hanging on a gallery wall, it becomes part of somebody else's experience.

The interesting thing is, even though I’ve made the decisions about the subject, the colours the last brush stroke, I don't actually get to decide what anyone else sees.

They might notice something that I hadn't really thought about. They may bring their own memory or an association to it. They may be drawn to a particular colour, a tiny detail, the light, the texture, or simply the feeling that it gives them when they stand in front of it.

That is one of the most beautiful things about art, the physical painting itself hasn't changed, but the encounter with it becomes a personal experience for everyone.

One of the most wonderful things as an artist is to hear the stories and experiences from the people who have resonated with the work in some way. It feels like the paintings almost grow their own personality and identity, with new stories, new meaning and new connections.

So, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who took the time to get in touch and connect with me and share their experiences. It really does mean so very much.

There is joy in the noticing, the process, the making of, but ultimately, the magic happens not in the studio with me and the painting, but when it stirs something in another person. When the paintings become part of someone else’s experience.

I’d love to take this opportunity to thank everybody who went to see the exhibition, who stopped to look, who shared their thoughts with me, who collected artwork, or who simply spent a little time with the paintings.

Thank you for bringing your own stories, memories and meanings to the work. It makes this all such a beautiful, rich cycle of sharing!

I think there is a particular kind of joy to be found in creating something that is eventually no longer ours.

Have you ever made something as a gift for someone else? Perhaps a painting, a card, a cake, something knitted or crocheted, a meal, a cup of tea even! Or simply something you’ve made with your own hands?

What does it feel like for you to make something knowing that it will become part of someone else’s life?

Until next Sunday…

🌿 May you find inspiration in nature this week.

Tracey Anne x

Bringing The Forest Home

‍ ‍ ‍My little travel sketchbook and travel watercolour set, in The Black Forest, Germany

On Confirmation, Travelling, and Filling the ‘Artist’s Well’

“It feels like we have been away for a month!” I said to my husband when we returned safely from our European road trip last Wednesday. Twelve days in total, 1600 miles covered in Myrtle (our trusty horse – courtesy of BMW!).

From Dover to Calais, Saint Quentin to Colmar, to the Black Forest. Then a return trip back up through Germany to Saarburg, through Luxembourg to Bruges in Belgium, before heading to Dunkirk for the boat back to Dover.

The travelling has felt new in many ways. We have never done such a road trip before. We have been fortunate to experience previous holidays which were all inclusive, usually next to a pool or beach in a hot climate – fantastic holidays, but quite different.

It has felt like an absolute privilege to see new places, experience new towns and immerse ourselves in new landscapes and languages.

I went away with a sketchbook in my pocket, with visions of sitting among the trees, paints beside me, capturing tons of little moments of what I saw.

Truth is, I opened the sketchbook once the whole trip!

I made a few marks with a travel watercolour set and honestly, didn’t particularly like them!

The funny thing is, I didn’t particularly enjoy making them either! I really loved being in the forest, but the little voice in my head that said ‘you should be sketching’ made it feel like something I was supposed to be doing.

We had walked up into the Black Forest from our little village that was our main base for the week. After a long, hot hill, we found a clearing by some log piles where there was a little bench. The 25 degrees-plus heat reminding us that here, summer was far from being over. We got our water bottles out and sat to soak up the forest.

It was there, while we took a break, that I got my sketchbook out.

I did a little doodle of what I thought was a little birdwatching hide. They were appearing everywhere around the forest. It turns out they are Hochsitz, meaning ‘high seat’, usually used by hunters. My initial vision of a little German birdwatcher with binoculars then changed somewhat!

After a short time, the sketchbook got closed. I ticked it off in my head as having made a start.

Instead, the camera became my sketchbook.

Taking photographs. Lots of photographs. Quite possibly a very excessive amount of photographs… There was so much to capture though, everywhere I looked - light, shadows, form, details and colours. Photographing everything became a little obsessive! It felt like I wanted to capture absolutely everything I could from each moment in the different landscapes, so I could re-live it again once we were home.

I ended up with a photographic sketchbook.

Following my last post about my Nannie Libs and her way of looking, I was inspired to take my sketchbook thinking, right! I’m ready to do the same, just like I used to do, many moons ago! But as it turned out, it was opened only once.

The experience left me thinking about what really counts as a record of looking.

Is it only a pencil line, or can it be a few watercolour marks with a brush? A photograph of moss because there was such variety? Or the millions of photographs of trees because the light kept changing? The sound of the wind in the trees and distant birds, like the woodpecker, recorded so I could keep it?

What if noticing doesn’t have to look the way we expect it to look?

Whilst we were away, I started to write a travel journal, capturing our experiences and encounters each day, sights, smells and sentimental moments! I seemed to run out of time during the travelling, so ensured I filled it in when we got home as I’m sure it will be a source of joy to look back on one day.

A gift to our future selves so we can re-live some of the details we might otherwise forget!

I also love that whilst I’m looking forward to reigniting my relationship with sketchbooks again, I realised that sometimes the thing we think we are supposed to be doing can get in the way of actually seeing. The method matters less than the noticing!

I think the biggest thing the trip confirmed for me is that I don’t need to learn how to notice; I already do! I just needed to give myself the freedom to look in the way that feels natural to me. It felt much freer on this trip to capture everything with the camera and my written word, knowing that the play with the paint will certainly follow later!

Not only did the adventure allow me to practise my way of seeing – colour, light, composition, textures and nature – it also gave us incredible cathedrals, butterfly and chocolate museums, galleries, many waterfalls – some cascading through little German towns – wine festivals, the sound of ancient church bells ringing over gothic architecture, tasting French, German and Belgian beers, Schnitzels, Black Forest Gateaux, Flemish stews, waffles and of course, Belgian chocolate!

But ultimately, it gave us quality time together to explore the world a little further.

Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way, talks about the idea of ‘filling the well’. Her idea is that creativity needs to be replenished; we can’t continually draw from the well without taking time to fill it again.

She introduces the idea of ‘Artist Dates’ which involve deliberately taking yourself somewhere, or doing something, that gives you experiences which feed your creative imagination. They don’t have to be grand or expensive, it might be a walk in nature, visiting a gallery or museum, exploring somewhere new, or even looking at the place where you live through the eyes of a tourist for an afternoon.

Knowing that I was on an ‘Artist’s Date Road Trip’ meant I could simply enjoy it, with no pressure of thinking, I need to find inspiration for the next collection. Instead, I could be fully present in the experiences themselves, knowing that somehow, in ways I couldn’t yet know, I was absorbing them. The Black Forest, the waterfalls, the galleries, the architecture, the food, the sounds, the colours, all of it was going into the well!

But the important thing is that ‘filling the well’ doesn’t have to mean travelling 1600 miles across Europe. It could be taking the long way home and noticing something you’ve never noticed before. It could be sitting under a tree for just half an hour with no particular purpose. It could be visiting somewhere you’ve lived near for years, but never actually explored. It could be going to a museum you’ve walked past a hundred times.

Or it could simply be allowing yourself to be curious again.

I didn’t come home with a full sketchbook, but I did certainly come home with my well a little fuller.

And now I’m looking forward to seeing what may be created from it!

Have you made a little time to ‘fill your well’ lately? And if not, what might fill it for you?

Until next Sunday…

🌿 May you find inspiration in nature this week.

Tracey Anne x

A Legacy of Moments of Noticing

‍ A little sketch by Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Rowell, (My wonderful Nan!) Primrose Cottage, 23rd August 1998

On Anniversaries, Sketchbooks& Fence Posts

It’s hard to believe that it was eighteen years ago last Friday, my husband and I tied the knot. To celebrate, we treated ourselves to a nice meal in a French restaurant. It amused us greatly when the very kind waitress said the staff had been rather puzzled by our age and had imagined we would be much older when we booked the table!

“We’ll take that” we both said!

When milestones and anniversaries come around, it’s easy to reflect on how quickly those eighteen years have flown. So many unexpected moments, mountains, molehills and memories, all leaving life a little richer in some way than it was before.

Last summer saw the passing of one of my greatest artistic influences, my Nannie Libs - Libby as she was affectionately known to her many friends. Over her long life of ninety-six years, she collected a wealth of moments and memories, many of which can be now treasured by her family, through her many sketchbooks. It was a privilege last year, to carefully scan, page by page, each little book.

Eight of them are home to a very special collection of fences and gate posts.

She instinctively took a sketchbook with her everywhere. Not to capture the biggest landmarks or the most touristy scenic places (although she had many a painting and beautiful drawings of these too!). But to simply make marks and note memories.

I’ve always had a love hate relationship with my sketchbooks.

With shelves stacked and a wooden chest filled with so many ‘half-finished’ ones, I often had a fear of ‘ruining’ the page with something I didn’t like or wasn’t very proud of.

At art college, sketchbooks were evidence of coursework to be marked. How well have we explored an idea? How original was our concept? Had we developed our thoughts enough and resolved the artist brief? The sketchbook stopped being a place to wonder and became a place where you had to prove that you were wondering correctly!

It’s a transformative thing to lose the sense of not wanting to ‘waste paper’ and to start feeling the freedom in just exploring what wants to be captured. For no one else to mark or for tutors to ‘critique’, but for simply the joy of the process in capturing something that has caught your eye.

I don’t think Nannie Libs ever set out to make a collection of her ‘Post Books’ for the sake of them being treasured one day, it just so happens that they have now become little precious time capsules.

Scanning those pages last year, ignited something deep within me.

It felt like a returning to a way of looking that had been dormant for many years. A way of seeing colours, shadows, outlines and potential paintings with that little thought of ‘Ooo I’d like to capture that’.

The thing that stays with me from ‘Libby’s Post Books’ isn’t simply the quality of the drawings (although they are super cute!). It’s the evidence of a life being lived through ‘Moments of Noticing’.

What moves me is I can see how she looked at the world. She noticed things, captured thoughts, sounds, posts, people and places. She stopped long enough to draw them. She was curious, she wondered and appreciated the world around her.

And now long after those moments have passed, there is an inheritance of a life lived attentively. A record of looking and noticing.

Returning to the sketchbooks now has a different meaning for me. The page doesn’t have to be finished to be precious, scribbles don’t need to be particularly beautiful, half-finished drawings can simply say ‘I saw the beauty and wanted to capture this’. Not all my marks need to ‘become art’.

They are a record of a living process. I am practising no longer worrying about ‘ruining’ a record of life! So what if a page or two has a coffee (or cake!) stain, a wonky drawing, a scribble, a half-finished idea! This is simply evidence of the sketchbooks being used.

We never really know who may treasure something.

As I looked through the sketchbook entries again this morning, I wondered whether Nannie Libs might have happened to draw something on this very date. And there it was, a page dated 23rd August from 1998.

A ‘Moment of Noticing’ carried across 28 years.

What would you put in a sketchbook if you stopped worrying about making it beautiful, and simply used it to remember how you noticed the world?

Until next Sunday…

🌿 May you find inspiration in nature this week.

Tracey Anne x

Between Green & Gold

‍ Golden seed heads from a recent walk in our local ancient woodland

On Transitions.

It has been unusual weather here in North Wales. Living here, I never expected to be praying for rain, it has always been a given that within a day or two, it will come and soak the ground.

With dried earth across the U.K, making wildfires spread easily, my thoughts turn to all those people impacted by the raging flames, here and around the globe. Nature is certainly facing her own challenges right now, as are we.

The government text message alert, with its alarming sound, rippled through the exhibition’s opening night on Friday evening. Each person’s phone received the message about the risk of wildfires at different times. It was a stark reminder that whilst we were gathered to celebrate the ‘Colours of Nature’ through art, nature is currently feeling particularly fragile.

After what has been a long hot summer, I’m feeling ready to embrace the oncoming autumn. I think the garden is too.

The trees appear to be turning a lot sooner than in previous years. The colours shifting but not quite fully transitioning yet. It is the space in-between. The sensing of oncoming change, whilst embracing the last of the longer days.

Whilst out walking in a local ancient woodland, I was captured by the contrasting gold of the seed heads in the photograph above. The golden browns, standing proudly against the backdrop of the still, very green forest beyond.

Perhaps that is what caught my attention in those seed heads. They are already changing, but they are not quite gone. Something has finished, whilst something else is being carried forward. And perhaps that is the beauty of transition; not knowing quite what comes next, but trusting that even in the changing and the letting go, there are seeds being carried forward.

The fires remind us how vulnerable this beautiful landscape can be, the seed heads remind me that it is also remarkably resilient.

What are you noticing in the space between one season and the next?

I hope you all stay safe in these last days of summer.

Until next Sunday…

🌿 May you find inspiration in nature this week.

Tracey Anne x

The White Rabbit & The Window

‍ Dawn at my landing window, Saturday 8th August 2026

On Slowing Down, Changing Pace & Noticing What was Always There.

Ouch – I woke up last Sunday with a sharp pain in my nagging hip, telling me I’d definitely slept in a position it was not happy about. Still, I got up, moved around and met one of my besties for a nurturing walk in the woods. By the time I’d got home, it was difficult to weight bear.

Hip bursitis, said the doctor, it might take up to two weeks to get back to normal. Suddenly I was forced to walk slowly, having to allow more time for everything. I’m relieved to say that I am walking again now, and I’ll never take that privilege for granted. But it got me thinking more about how I had literally been forced to slow down.

Why was I still walking at a million miles per hour anyway? Particularly whilst at work, or when grocery shopping, I would still move as if I were late for a very important date (as I hear the White Rabbit sing whilst checking his watch, in Disney’s animation of Alice in Wonderland!).

If not consciously choosing to slow down, to notice nature, painting to remember, or observing something new, apparently my default speed, is still ‘go go go’.

Reflecting on this week, when I got back to moving again, although slower than before, the same amount of work still got completed (although hoovering took a back seat this week – any excuse!). The groceries still made their way to the fridge. The food still got prepared and eaten. The days still came and went.

It made me think about the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. The Hare isn’t particularly ignorant, nor is the tortoise particularly wise. In fact, there is a place for both slow and steady and speedy in life at different times. Life can sometimes encourage us to be more Hare (or more White Rabbit!). Then sometimes, life can give us no choice but to become the tortoise. Not lazy, not better, but different. When you do slow down, the world changes.

My slower days and earlier nights this week, made way for an even earlier morning. When I woke up yesterday on a Saturday morning at exactly, 4:44am, I thought, typical – a morning when I could lay in, I’m now awake. Surrendering to not being able to fall back to sleep, I got up. I’m so glad I did. I was met with the most beautiful sunrise streaming in through the landing window. Had I not had a slower week and an earlier start, I would have missed this very moment.

Saturday happened to be the 8th of August and everywhere I’ve looked this week, I’ve seen talk of the Lion’s Gate. A time associated with courage, intention and new beginnings.

For me, the synchronicity of waking up on the 8th of the 8th at 4:44am, was worth noticing.

This week literally forced me to slow down, which happened to open up a new window in time. A new day beginning, one that I might have otherwise missed the dawn of.

It’s the same window I pass every morning, but this week, it was a new speed in which to admire the view.

If you looked through the same window at a different speed, what might you see?

Until next Sunday…

🌿 May you find inspiration in nature this week.

Tracey Anne x

Returning to Trust

‍ A detail from the painting Held in Light, Mixed Media on Canvas

On Patience, painting and finding my way back.

“I can’t do it. It doesn’t look right” my frustrated nine-year-old self said, to my wonderfully patient Nan, as she taught me how to create perspective in a watercolour landscape. My last post showed a picture of that painting. I still recall sitting at the dining room table overlooking the abundant garden, as she gently, but firmly told me, ‘You can do it, you are doing it, have patience’.

She was right. I just needed to trust.

Looking back, I am filled with gratitude at how those early experiences shaped not only the artist in me, but the way I see the world. I have dabbled with art on and off over the years in different ways, like dipping my toe in different waters, waiting until it was just comfortable enough to dive back in.

For years, our spare room became a dusty museum: shelves of art materials, half finished sketchbooks, books waiting patiently to be opened. Every time I walked in, I was reminded of the artist I kept telling myself I would become “one day”. Looking back now, I realise it wasn’t a lack of ability; it was a lack of trust.

Life became busy, and with it, the distance between my art and me grew even further. Having left school to train for four years in art and design, graphics and illustration, my career had taken me on some very different paths. Each time I returned to the page, I would start with enthusiasm, and within a short time the work was abandoned. I had forgotten patience, with myself, the materials, the canvas, I had forgotten to trust.

Returning to nature has taught me to trust. Nature doesn’t rush to the finish line; it has patience in its unfurling. It has innate wisdom that allows it to take the time it takes and become the form it becomes.

One of the most liberating things I have found through my painting process is the freedom of layering. It is more guided by feeling rather than prescriptive forms, letting the textures themselves guide the final piece. Breaking free from my previous tightly formed illustrative style, where every mark on the page mattered, I am now letting nature be the inspiration and the paint be the guide.

Each painting begins with trust, that I can push through those moments of previous abandonment, when I would have morphed back into my nine-year-old self with those ‘I can’t do it’ moments. Now I simply trust that layers and form will become what they become.

Patience and trust then become easier to practice in other areas of life. Where the old perfectionist in me would need to be the expert, stalling any attempts at doing something new, a softer, kinder way of being with myself has developed. One that gently chips away at those old creative blocks and invites the artist in me to grow and play.

Where in your life are you learning to have patience with yourself and trust the process?

Until next Sunday…

🌿 May you find inspiration in nature this week.

Tracey Anne x

Why Nature’s Open Arms?

‍ ‍One of my earliest landscape watercolours (1991), painted when I was nine years old.

“How is it possible for all this to exist?…

In a rat race of a world, there is some kind of bliss”

The above is an opening line of a poem I wrote about finding refuge in nature, when I was 17 years old.

Now, age 44, I can honestly say that nature’s open arms have always welcomed me throughout the course of my life, although my connection with and appreciation of nature has definitely evolved over the years.

If you’d said to me 15 years ago, to slow down, observe the beauty in the small moments, I’d have probably scoffed at you and said ‘I really don’t have the time’. Now, I understand that it is for that very reason, I needed to slow down even more.

Even though I grew up in a town, I was fortunate enough to be brought up spending time in nature as a child: long Sunday walks in the local country park with our beautiful boarder collie Patch, not to mention plenty of camping trips with nothing more than field and cold water tap! I learnt much of my appreciation of the natural world through observation, seeing how the adults in my life found peace and tranquility, when nervous systems were not being bombarded by input from the man made material world. I felt it too.

Life has a way of forcing you to change, it will shout louder if you don’t listen. My returning to nature as healer and teacher was a result of just that. Living in a big city, working two jobs, trying to make ends meet, the intolerable volume of chronic depression, anxiety and burnout, got so loud, change was inevitably needed.

Having escaped to a semi rural location, in the beauty of the Welsh hills, one Christmas many years ago, my husband and I were putting the tree and decorations away for another year, when the bare living room made me sigh “more winter months to endure, with nothing but bleak bareness”. I had always dreaded winter, it was something to get through rather than appreciate. Once the warmth and glitter of the festivities had passed, I really didn’t see anything worth celebrating. I hated that I dreaded winter. It was another reminder that I wanted to be able to enjoy and appreciate my life all year round, not feel even more depressed.

As the bare walls and living room stared back at me, I wondered what if the tree was simply a ‘winter tree’? why don’t I simply decorate my home with evergreens and pine cones to celebrate winter anyway? in fact, why don’t I decorate my home to celebrate every season? What if the decorations were replaced with seasonal pieces that celebrate life, generally, all year round?

And so, all those years ago, I set about sourcing ways to appreciate each of nature’s months. Looking closer into what is happening around us with the trees, what is growing, what birds are singing? I also started to notice a general shift in consciousness around that time, that more people were craving more connection to nature. Retail started stocking more seasonal decorations, beyond the traditional holidays, it seemed that there was a shift in trends that more people were noticing the changing seasons.

Interestingly, as I was deepening my journey into the seasonal shifts and nature’s patterns, I discovered the ‘Celtic Wheel of the Year’ - it felt like discovering a ready made treasure map, with a rich history of regular check points throughout the year, that honour the changing seasons, exactly what I was intuitively attempting to create in my own life. Resonating with its simplicity, I immediately wanted to know more, and just as life’s beautiful synchronicities often unfold, conversations with like minded friends revealed some of them knew of it too. Most of the folk in my social networks craved a deeper connection to the rhythms of the natural world and to live in harmony with the seasons. Books were recommended and shared, celebratory sessions and gatherings then followed. I felt like I’d found one of the missing pieces to my wellbeing, like being reconnected to an old loyal friend that I had always been in touch with, but had somehow lost the number for.

Since then, much time has passed, and with it, I’ve gained a deeper wisdom in that being able to appreciate the beauty of life all year round, with each of its seasons, is truly a gift. No longer dreading the long winter, but embracing the change and invitation to rest, restore and recalibrate. Instead of endlessly waiting for the working week to be over and wishing my life away, intuitively feeling each energy change as the weeks of life go by, slowing down and living more mindfully. Over the years, the lessons, metaphors and teachings that nature has effortlessly offered, have lifted the darker clouds and anxious thoughts that used to dominate my skyline.

It has been a returning, a reminder that we too are nature, and it is our disconnection from it, that is the source of most unease.

I hope to share that feeling of slowing down, reflecting, appreciating and embracing the wonder of life’s seasons here with you, so that you may be inspired on your own journey, of returning to Nature’s Open Arms.

Thank you for walking with me.

Tracey Anne x