Introduction My name is Tracie and I am based in London, England. I’m an artist, a medium and a mother of two of the most amazing daughters I could ever have wished for.

Artist My passion as an artist grew many years ago and began when I couldn’t afford to buy paintings for my own walls. Friends were extremely encouraging after seeing a mural I painted on my children’s bedroom wall and without my knowing, put my name down as a contributor at a local charity art exhibition. I about went into panic, having been a very shy and private person and had never touched a real paintbrush in my life! Those same friends made sure I never had any excuse to not give it go and got together to buy me my first watercolours, brushes, pencils, pastels and papers as a surprise...a four month early birthday present all those years ago.

I remember being terrified that I would get it wrong and waste everyone’s money, let alone the faith they had in me to do it. No confidence whatsoever!

The first real painting I ever did was the Monument of the Great Fire of London. It sold immediately and made a substantial amount for charity. St John’s Wood Church was the second painting I did for the same event, which also sold for far more than I ever imagined it would, and again, the funds raised went to good causes which was terrific!

Self taught, I began to grow in confidence and dared myself to try something far more intricate, and my love for painting portraits began. I love eyes. If the eyes are wrong, the whole picture will be wrong, but if they’re right, they can look straight through you in return.

My style has changed over time, as have the tools I use and pyrography (wood scorching), has become a very recent love of mine. My work also includes being a published Illustrator.

I’ll be forever grateful to those friends whom without them, I would never have had the confidence to have tried in the first place. I could never have donated the amount of money raised personally, so it was a wonderful feeling to have contributed the amount raised to the final total, just by doing what I’d always wanted to do.

I hope you enjoy my works as I have enjoyed creating them, and that hearing how I started, someone reading this might be encouraged to try things they’ve always wanted to try themselves, be it painting, a new direction, or sky diving. Go for it!

Medium Since I was a little girl I have been able to see, hear, feel and sense the spirit world around us. It was difficult as a child, as it would freak my sisters out totally if I told them what I was seeing, hearing or feeling. It took a long time to figure out what was happening, as I couldn’t understand how they couldn’t see or hear them, too. It got to the point where I was convinced that they were denying it to simply wind me up. But they were on the opposite end of that conclusion, equally convinced that I was making it up just to scare them, and equally as confusing, I couldn't understand what it was they found scary about it!

By the time I reached around the age of 8 years, I learned to stop telling people and started to keep it very much to myself. It didn’t happen every day or all the time, but there would be moments, or guidance, that would happen every now and again and was a lot clearer and more prominent than before. For example, sitting in an Religious Education class at school about that age, I vividly remember feeling like I was suddenly being enveloped in a warmth, feeling safe, secure and protected just like how a mother wraps her arms around her children and makes them feel the same way, and the words “Life will teach you all you need to know. Listen to them, respect them, but life will teach you all you need to know.”

It was one of my first lessons in beginning to understand how and why everything happens for a reason and when the time is right. Those words have stuck with me ever since, and boy, were they ever right :)

But it wasn’t until I was about 14 that I had an experience that was to change my life forever. I began to pay even more attention to it all and was old enough to really start questioning my ‘guides’ probably for the first time and had those questions answered in many different ways. It was when much of my life began to fall into place, at least where spirituality was concerned and started to make sense of things that had happened that I couldn’t have understood or explained before, or didn’t even think much about until that point. At that time there were no books available to me, or internet, or TV shows around, and it wasn’t until I met another medium some years later, that it really did all begin to fall into place.

She knew nothing about me, had never met me before, yet she knew and confirmed so much while I sat there silently and it really began to hit home how alike we were. It was quite a pivotal moment for me. I remember her also sitting looking at me and saying “You can do this, too. You’ve already been doing it, but it’s the confidence thing. And you’ll be fine the moment you really start to understand that ‘everything really does happen for a reason’. “ That made me smile, and that smile turned into a chuckling grin. I already knew that it was my lot that had told her to say that to me, to confirm for the last time that day, what they’d been telling me all along. I've written about just some of these experiences in the spiritual section.

Fast forwarding somewhat, a few years later one thing lead to another and I began taking platform in spiritualist churches myself, and more recently have also been asked to join various Paranormal Investigation teams which have lead to many more amazing personal and insightful experiences to say the least.

So again, if you’ve read any of the above and find yourself saying “Gawd, that sounds like me…” then there might be one little piece of advice I can give you that might really help and that is this;

There are instincts and then there is fear. Instincts and fear are two completely different things yet often get confused as being one and the same. Know that instincts are there to guide you and will help you. Learn to differentiate between the two, learn to recognise them, learn to trust them, then realise that there is nothing to fear but fear itself .

Love,

Tracie..xxx