I am told that I have a way of coaxing an image from the canvas. Whether painting, collaging paper, or marking through paint, I aspire to reveal an image and a message of community. The message may be in how we do life together and the intentionality, but it is also the ways we are in communion with God: the ways we pause to be still and in the ways He pursues us.
We are not meant to do life alone. My eye and heart are drawn to the ways we are connected and how we are brought together. As a little girl, I used to play underneath a quilting frame as my grandmother and her friends would tell stories and sew the pieces of fabric together. These early memories of community, geometric shapes, and filtered light still lay deep within me and have become a part of my creative process. Like the quilts I played beneath, my paintings are layered throughout with faith and reflection, community and heritage, and embedded with meaning.
Tracey Penrod was born and raised in a small town in Eastern North Carolina. Although Tracey has some formal art education, she is mostly a self-taught artist who returned to artmaking after a 20ish year hiatus in which she was teaching in the North Carolina Public School System. She was more than ready to return to her creative side.
