TrAcIe PEisley
Tracey Peisley’s work is intense, highly charged with an emotional content that relates to the everyday drama of existing.
An experienced British Artist, she qualified with a BA(hons) in Fine Art at Bath Academy 1988, MA at City Of Birmingham Polytechnic 1989 and MA in Art Psychotherapy in 2006 at Hertfordshire University.
Following a rigorous training in drawing and a lively discourse at Bath Academy, she positions herself alongside contemporary Women Artists, exploring themes of intimacy, storytelling, identity, vulnerability and shame. What it is to be human…passionate, poetic and wanting to attach to others Peisley pulls the viewer into personal dialogue.
Through imagery and form her work cuts to a symbolic resonance that hits the back of the psyche to cause a sometimes awkward acknowledgement about oneself. Through a relentless process of stripping artifice from her own ordinary reality, she feels that she captures emotion that couldn’t be constellated in anyway but poetry or art. A woman wanting to make sense of the existential loneliness we find ourselves in, wanting to make sincere relational connections and speak compassionately from lived experience. To find out more about Tracie visit her website here.
We are delighted to have Tracie as part of our Contemporary Kent Artists exhibition at The Horsebridge Arts Gallery on the 8th - 20th of October 2025.
In this talk with Charles Williams, Tracie Peisley talks about how she makes art and the feelings behind her work. They start with "Maman", an ambitious ceramic piece relating to her mother's death, that explores her struggle to claim space within a challenging world. The sculpture, which started as a caring figure, changed into a cave showing personal torment.
She explains how it was emotionally hard to create the sculpture and how it helped her deal with painful memories. The conversation also touches on trauma, attachment, the multi-media nature of her art, the intimate relationship with ceramics, and how people react to her work.
She talks about wanting her art to feel close and personal, often inspired by a sense of longing and pain. She shares her struggle with existential terror and anxiety and how her art is a safe space for her. She also recalls a time when she was ambitious, going to art galleries in London and later travelling to the United States.
Recorded on 20th January 2024 at the Beaney in Canterbury.