Tracey Russell

As a beginner, I used the formal picture elements to judge when a work was finished. As I mature as a painter, I have come to realize the process is the product. I am strictly using my intuition—conscious vs. subconscious. Maybe good abstraction is, by nature, an incomplete act. I explore the beauty and complexity of expressive, deliberate and subconscious mark-making—spontaneously following these suggestions of line, pattern, color, and texture—creating an abstract narrative with a subtle hint or implication of a thought or experience. If I start to feel too comfortable, or too finished with a painting, I will purposefully mess it up. Sometimes with an off color, shape or line. Then I have to start again. The more times I start over, I believe, the richer it becomes.