Author: Tracy Spiers

Why my PhD is threatening to kill the very subject I am studying – playfulness. I have a problem and I am stuck. I am a playful practitioner who delights in making ordinary mundane tasks more fun by reframing them and producing visual images that involve rearranging objects to create ‘enjoyable incongruencies’. My main hypothesis… Continue reading Frozen bubbles

I am sure we have all felt lost and unsure. It is like being in a maze, surrounded by high hedges and not being able to see beyond. The only way forward is to try the path ahead, but then that gets confusing when it divides, and you have a choice. Then there are the… Continue reading Feeling lost

I have been strangely silent on my blog, and I apologise. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say, it’s just that my time has been poured into research experiments, academic reading, and an attempt to write literature reviews on anything to do with playfulness. So, from now on, I will keep my blog… Continue reading The long-distance runner

Sometimes we do mundane ordinary things without thinking, they just become a part of routine. But what does mundane mean? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it means ‘very ordinary and therefore not interesting. Other phrases associated with mundane include tedious, repetitive, boring, everyday and commonplace. My challenge is how can I punctuate this with playfulness?… Continue reading Out of the blue

Paul Klee is well known for ‘taking a line for a walk’. I am talking the artist for a walk, and in doing so looking for the colour, lines, textures, shapes that jump out. I will concentrate on the same walk, but each time I go out, I will focus on a different theme. For… Continue reading Simply red

Having spent the past six weeks writing a 10,000 word essay on depiction, I must admit I have felt my creative, playful, joyful spirit slip into monochrome and grumpiness. Studying for a PhD of course requires hours of reading and studying, referencing and reflecting, but when you are a colourful creative, there is a desperate… Continue reading Punctuating the mundane with playfulness

For my final experiment I wanted to attempt an illustration which I felt summed up what I thought an indeterminate image looks like visually as opposed to verbally. The rules were therefore to capture what I consider an indeterminate image is through the painting itself. It was about making an illustration of what I mean… Continue reading Experiment Ten – depicting constrained depiction or visual indeterminacy

For this experiment I decided to use a range of processes gleaned from previous experiments as well as both traditional and digital drawing/painting methods. So the rule was somehow combining the processes and examine if a sufficient outcome can be made. Method – (starting point) a continual contour drawing of myself to free the movement… Continue reading Experiment Nine – combining digital & traditional

Having acted as the pencil, I wanted to return to a simple stylus and iPad but I wanted to ensure my brain didn’t overthink what i was doing. Therefore the rules were to not allow too much time to think, to draw without looking at the paper and then swiftly apply layers and strip back.… Continue reading Experiment Eight – contour lines and colour

There is now what is called Strava art whereby cyclist and runners plan their route very specifically in order to create the shape of a recognisable object or a face using their GPS. It stands for global positioning system, a satellite network used to locate vehicles and people. I didn’t want to be in control… Continue reading Experiment Seven – artist as the pencil