EASTERN BOP FOCUS
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Artist creates international following online The Millennials or the Gen Ys are those most associated with creating business opportunities online.
However, home schooling her three children, Chloe, Jac and April, put that career on the backburner. The children are young adults now and Tracey Lee has returned to art – discovering at the same time, a whole new way of promoting her work through the internet.
Diverse styles
“My style of painting has changed too. Back in the 1980s I would have described myself as a painter of flowers but now my subjects are much more diverse and my artistic style is contemporary with the inclusion of abstract, natural and botanical elements.” Birds, both exotic and native, feature strongly in her work, as do seascapes, and most recently, feathers. “I’m really enjoying painting feathers and they seem popular with the public too.” Some paintings are inspired by what she sees around her, but not all. “Sometimes I dream a painting and wake up the next morning to begin working on it.” Tracey Lee’s use of mediums is also diverse, from water colour, to acrylics to oils.
Tracey Lee’s photography and inspirational quotes. Describing herself as an ‘upcycler’, she also gets pleasure from creating something beautiful or useful from objects that may otherwise be discarded, and showing, online, how others can do the same. Her step-by-step instructions on how to create a range of simple but effective crafts and DIY projects are illustrated by photographs, initially taken by daughter April. “However, April has left home so I had to learn how
to take my own photographs and have also developed a real passion for macro-photography, especially of plants. “I like to focus on the beauty people might miss, which we can find all around us if we look carefully enough.” Tracey Lee’s art work can also be found hanging on the walls of Poppy’s Café on The Strand in Whakatane or at:http://miabellapassion.blogspot.co.nz
Whakatane artist Tracey Lee Cassin has built a Apparel collection Her art doesn’t just hang on strong international following for her art and walls. She’s an artistic designer her crafts through an online blog. for Vida & Co, a US-based company, which incorporates While Whakatane artist Tracey Lee her artwork in an apparel collection that Cassin may not fit that profile, it hasn’t includes scarves and wraps. stopped her building a following of Earlier this year she was asked to thousands worldwide. submit an artwork to the Imago Mundi “I jokingly call myself ‘the Nonna of Benetton ‘Kiwi Consciousness’ New bloggers’ in New Zealand because most Zealand project, which is based in of our successful bloggers are much Treviso, Italy. younger than me,” says Tracey Lee, who In 2012, encouraged by friends and uses the Italian word for grandmother as those who enjoyed her day-to-day creaa reflection of her Italian heritage. tivity and art online, Tracey Lee began “However, in the [United] States there her Mia Bella Passions Blog. Today it are thousands of bloggers of my age or has thousands of followers via Google+, older. In fact, the vast majority of my Facebook and email subscription. followers are in the USA.” “I do two or three blog posts a week The self-taught artist grew up in and each one takes a lot of time because Nelson and moved to Whakatane at I want to be sure everything is correct age 18, where she worked as a florist, then a copy writer for local radio station and of high quality.” It’s not a personal blog as such, but 1XX. By the late-1980s she’d become an features art, craft, DIY, gardens, baking, established artist.
Alpaca
Dairy
Kiwifruit
Elaine Fisher