statement

The main reason I'm an artist is because I have a very strong compulsion to make things.

The way in which I do this has changed over the years but the overriding thing is to be involved in a process of making and for this reason, I am more motivated by the use of skill than I am by concept.

Working in a way where the making leads the process very often means not knowing what you're doing and I've been using drawing, painting and writing as a means of exploring the explicit and implicit aspects of my own thinking process. I've written about how it's possible to examine one's own ways of thinking through making drawings as part of my research.

My own particular process begins by allowing my eye to choose my subject matter for me, and very often I'm drawn to complex structures which through making and observing, I find myself having to make sense of. I have latterly looked to my urban environment in Glasgow where I live for my subject matter.

The more I make things, the more familiar I become with my working processes and understand how through an interaction of the known and the unknown, my thinking process evolves. I once heard the artist James Spence say that an artist should consider himself lucky if through making art he came to know himself better, and I very much agree with his sentiment.

bio

born: 1963, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England

education:

Glasgow School of Art, PhD, 2008
Cumbria College of Art and Design, BA (Hons), 2004
Northumbria University, LLB (Hons), 1984

selected awards/honors

Winner, The Aspect Prize 2009
Royal Scottish Academy Residency Award 2009
The Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour, Hospitalfield Residency 2009
Royal Scottish Academy, John Kinross Scholarship 2007

selected publications

Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner, Intellect Books, June 2010
Drawing as coming to know: how is it that I know I make sense of what I do? Unpublished PhD Thesis, Glasgow University.Glasgow School of Art
Drawing as coming to know - Published on the Drawing Research Website Tracey, URL: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ac/tracey/
Drawing as Reflective Analysis 2008 Publication/Catalogue for the exhibition
Drawing as Reflective Analysis‚ to accompany travelling exhibition, the Air Gallery London, Lincoln School of Art, Glasgow School of Art, and Sydney

selected solo or two-person exhibits

The Meffan Gallery, Forfar ,2010
Recent work from Florence and Glasgow, House for an Art Lover, Glasgow 2009
Drawing Construction, Lillie Gallery, Glasgow 2008
Surfaces Geologia, Glasgow School of Art 2005

selected group shows

The Aspect Prize Final, The Fleming Collection, London 2010
The BBC Scotland Collection, Glasgow Museum of Modern Art, 2009
Thompsons Gallery, London 2009
Royal Glasgow Institute Annual Exhibition, 2009