I have to put down roots like little tribut trees to make me feel like I belong and the way that my little hooks are stories. Hi and welcome to episode 214 of Outduces is on this generous and humorous

conversations to feed your creative soul and get you thinking.

Alice is taking the week off this week and I am joined by Tracy Tompkins.

Hi Tracy.

Hello Louise.

Tracy is an artist, a ceramicist, a painter from South Africa who now lives here in the UK.

She's also the community manager of my membership group Art Tribe, which she's been

doing for three years now I think. And built it into an amazing community and I wanted to talk to Tracy this week

because I've had this topic going around my mind for a month or two now which is

about making art through times of change and how we manage that and it's not like there's one right way to manage it. There's many, many ways to manage that, but I've been through some change in the last few years.

Tracy has been through mammoth changes, which we're going to get into,

absolutely mammoth changes that have transformed over time the way she works and what she thinks about in her art and you'll understand why when we get into why. So tell us Tracy a little bit about like can you give us the

potted history in five sentences?

Change, change. sentences.

Change, change and change. No, your potty history.

Oh, what happened to you?

Right, so I've, my first change, I think, monumental change change must have been when I have changed from

being a full-time ceramic artist to painting. That was when you were in South Africa. Yeah that happened about 2019 I think it really happened.

I was getting frustrated with the slips burning off on the clay and I just took up painting and

absolutely loved what what paint could do for me and I just built a new studio

I was all settling in things were hunky-dory I had a lovely beautiful view had a swimming pool straight outside I had

air conditioning it was just bespoke perfect place and then a year later we sold.

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