welcome to my website

I’m so glad you’re here!

I first found my way into painting as a teen through sign writing, a practice that required patience, control, and attention to detail. For many years, I resisted this as an artistic approach for how I apply paint to the canvas, thinking it wasn’t “painterly” enough. Over time, I’ve come to embrace it as my instinctive method, a style that now shapes how I layer pattern, texture, and line.

I have developed a visual language that engages with pattern, surface, and shadow, drawing on the Pattern & Decoration Movement, a feminist approach that celebrates women as artists and domestic creative practices. My work also reflects the matrilineal craft traditions of my own family and honours the broader history of unrecognised creative labour by women.

Techniques such as sgraffito - a reductive process of scratching back through layers of paint - along with the use of glitter and gold, have become signature elements in my work. Sgraffito reveals what lies beneath, acknowledging both the physical layering of paint and the layered histories embedded in pattern and craft.

Through my paintings, I explore the intersection of identity and design - returning to my first love of making while situating it within broader conversations about pattern, memory, and feminist art.

- Tracey-Lea Morgan

Pietro/Pierre/Pedro.... Peter

This painting began as a large work (1.5 x 1m) called Restless Thoughts That Cling to Yesterday, shown at my MFA graduation exhibition, and then again at The NZ Art Show in 2024.

That’s where I met this gentleman. I didn’t know his name then (I came to learn much later it was Peter), he was admiring my work - and I was admiring his many layers of patterned clothing. He spoke in alliteration and riddles; I could hardly keep up!

I asked to take his photo, and he agreed… but only after dashing off to his bike to grab an alternate hat (the one he’s holding), so I’d have options!

After the show I was a bit stuck for ideas and eventually I decided to cut up the large blanket painting and turn it into some smaller ‘picnic’ paintings, an easy way back into the studio.

I wanted to paint Peter, but hadn’t asked his permission to do so for exhibiting, so I was reluctant. I began anyway, just as a painting exercise, my first attempt at realism and oil. It was daunting, and after a good start I put it aside.

5 months after I took the photo, Peter sat next to me on a Wellington bus! I told him we’d met previously, I showed him the photo & he remembered. We talked about pattern and colour, and when I asked, he gave permission to paint him, so I carried on with it, and loved the new experience of oils.

On the bus I asked his name. He said: “In Italy they call me Pietro, in Greece Petros, in France Pierre, in Spain Pedro…” He listed many more, but wouldn’t admit to Peter.

This painting was a finalist in the NZ Academy of Fine Arts Prize for Visual Art (2025) and sold on opening night.

Pietro/Pierre/Pedro.... Peter | 2025

530mm x 380mm | Acrylic & Oil on Canvas