Tracey Austen

I am currently in my second year of a BA (Hons) Fine Art Degree course being studied at the Havering College of Further and Higher Education.  As a practitioner I am now specialising in Painting and Sculpture. 

The subject that I have chosen to represent here is “distortion” of the human image in portraiture.  Many famous artists have used distortion and contortion as metaphors for something else in their paintings.  This may be to decipher the deeper parts of the human psyche as in Freudian theories.  Two great painters on this theme are Francis Bacon and Gerhard Richter but there are many others.  My ephemeral theme is based upon “self-image”, via emotions, feelings and expressions.  One minute you can be happy and then another moment sad. This is a typical human reaction to all the things that go on in our hectic lives today, a subject-matter that fascinates me.