Tracy Turner, Zoë Rudin

Tracey Turner is a contemporary abstract painter and textile artist based in the Cotswolds.  Her passionate relationship with textiles evolved from a practical curiosity, to follow a much more artistic path.  As her family’s demands on her time decreased Turner challenged herself to learn new techniques and mediums, studying at Cheltenham School of Fine Art, unleashing a ferocious appetite to put paint to canvas - which finds her rarely out of her studio.

Now working mainly in acrylic and oil, Turner’s work is a bold and emotional collection of organic shapes, growing and moving to form a cohesive conclusion.  Fearless in her approach to working both on a large and small scale, she is inspired by nature’s textures and muted colours.  Her floral abstracts strive to find an elegance and charm in imperfection and ageing as she focuses on flowers after full bloom, looking to push past the obvious perceptions of beauty.  

Zoë works from her Cotswold studio creating individual pieces designed with both beauty and practicality in mind. Her work is highly individual, she focuses on her love of texture and surface aiming to enhance the natural colours and idiosyncrasies of the clay to enhance the finished pieces.

"I aim to create ambitious sculptural work which enhances the beauty of a room,  if these pieces can have practical application too then even better!" . Her works range from small ceramic side tables to lamps and vases.

The finishes of the sculptural pieces have surfaces like honed stone "I grew up in a Cotswold village where every building and wall was structured from the beautiful white local limestone. I think this is where my love of the chiselled stone surface originates". The surfaces of Zoë‘s work are created through processes of carving, burnishing, scraping and keying the surface of the clay.
​
"I dont use molds or replicas, each sculptural piece is lovingly hand crafted and built and then fired to stoneware temperatures."