And so I definitely think it's a confidence thing when you start to learn when you tap into what's important to you,

you do get the sense of confidence. Hi and welcome to episode 165 of art juices is honest, generous and humorous conversations

to feed your creative soul and get you thinking.

With me Louise Fletcher and this week Alice is taking a break and I have two special

guests instead of one. I am joined by Tracy Tompkins and Amanda Pickles.

Hi everyone.

Hi. Thank you so much for being here. So Tracy and Amanda, I first met in what year was it? Was it 2019?

Yes. Yeah, when they both took my course and they are from opposite different parts of the world.

So Tracy was an experience at the time I met her and experienced an award winning ceramicist living in South Africa and she was interested in moving into exploring paint and Amanda was a long time professional artist living in North Yorkshire and was working a lot on

commissions and wanted to explore more of our own voice and perhaps move in a different direction with her work and that's how I met them both.

So, Tracy, have I, what, is there anything else people need to know about you?

What have I missed out?

I think that's a great summary, Louise. I definitely wanted to move into

paint. I've kind of been moving there with my ceramics, but I think more than that I wanted to tap into what it was that I wanted to say with my art.

I was in a space where I wasn't I was working more for my market I was producing work that was selling really well and I had to take I had to take make that choice to to tap into what I was about and what I felt that I really had was starting to lose that

so it was more about it wasn't so much about

painting is about finding more of yourself in whatever way that was going to come out.

Definitely and finding and finding a way to express that.

Because it's all very well knowing deep down what is important to you,

but I think more than that is getting it out in an autistic way and getting it out in a way that feels true to me.

It's interesting to hear Tracy actually because it was very similar for me. I was already painting obviously, but I sort of got hemmed into

slightly commercial aspect if you like in that I'd hit upon something with my

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