Every month we choose one of our favourite creatives to TAKE OVER the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine social media for the day. In January, we chose actress Keegan Connor Tracy to share with us the artists who have inspired her throughout her career. Just in case you missed it, below we present the full TAKE OVER.
Keegan Connor Tracy // Hi! I’m a woman who wears many hats. I’m an award-winning actress who enjoys playing a diverse range of characters. From the inscrutable Blue Fairy on ABC’s hit show Once Upon a Time to the troubled teacher Blair Watson, who wooed young Norman in Bates Motel, I continues to explore the spectrum as an actor. Now enjoying my fifth season as the sardonic Professor Lipson on Syfy’s hit The Magicians, I also played Queen Belle in all 3 installments of Disney’s smash musical success Descendants. I have also added emerging director to my resume with my debut film The Girl/La Fille, enjoying much success on the film festival circuit, and I’m currently in pre-production on my second film. My children’s book, This is a Job for Mommy! (Promontory Press) was recently released in paperback and I’m working on my next project A Keegolicious Cookbook, bringing together the food and stories I love. You can also listen to my soothing voice on the incredibly successful Calm app where I have several stories – and more to come. Check out my website www.keegolicious.com and my social medias to see what else I’m up to!
Photos via IMDb and drawing below by Justin Maas.
Martine Emdur // I love the work of Martine Emdur, whom I discovered on Instagram. There’s something deeply sensual about her work; the languid feeling of being enveloped in warm water (all the better if it is in the arms of a lover), the blue ripple of the water and the light dancing therein. There is a beautiful sense of calm that her work evokes. And while it is obviously sensual, it is also playful, gentle – evocative of a summer spent at the cottage of your youth. I also love the technique she uses, the way she plays with light and texture – many of her paintings, like GRIP remind me of Renaissance paintings where one can get lost in a square inch of brushstrokes.
Polly Wales // Love, love, LOVE Polly Wales confetti rings, they’ve been on my wish list for some time. Not only do I love the use of coloured stones, but also the way they are, as she says, ‘cast not set’. There’s something really vibrant and organic about her pieces and I covet them all. Also, she makes the raddest, most feminine skull rings I’ve seen yet.
Debbie Lelievre // I can’t quite recall how I discovered Debbie Lelievre’s work, however, working in the vibrant Vancouver film industry one encounters many artists and it was likely on set that I first heard of her and as soon as I checked out her work I was smitten! From her ‘Authentics’ series of pencil and ink illustrations on vintage paper (with a 20s aesthetic that speaks to my soul) to her whimsical ‘Birds of a Feather’ series, Debbie’s work has a wonder and humour to them that grab you instantly. I love how she plays with proportions and I marvel at her work whether in its vibrant, colourful punches or in the simplicity of black and white. Lelievre’s works are at turns both somber and whimsical, even as its muted palette challenges you to look deeper into its cubist influences.
Vieille France // I am utterly captivated by old photographs, but especially those depicting France, which is the home of my heart. I particularly love anything from 1920s Paris – there’s something about that era, that city, and that style that just captures my heart and I can never get enough. I have a stack of books filled with old photographs of Parisian life and I love to pore over them on a screen-free Sunday (yes, I do those!) and just get lost in another time. Having lived in Paris in my early 20s, and visited France countless times since, I love to go down the wormhole of looking through the old black and white pictures trying to identify streets I have wandered, brasseries where I have sat drinking wine and people watching for hours on end. I am fascinated by old photographs and how they represent our own impermanence. So many of my favorite photos hold faces that I know belong to people who are most certainly long passed, and something about that reminds me to live presently – though I suppose there’s a certain dissonance to getting lost in old photos to remind me to live in the present. But looking into the eyes of a gamin selling posies on the street, pictures of wartime austerity and post-war delight, I try to imagine how those people lived, what their daily life was like. I have been known to stand for hours at the bouquiniste (bookseller) stalls on the banks of the Seine just rifling through old postcards to find ones that stir my heart. I particularly enjoy the book Paris Changing – Revisiting Eugène Atget’s Paris (Rauschenberg) as it juxtaposes photos from as early as the 1890s against pictures of Paris from the 1990s and beyond. To see a horse-drawn cart on the corner in one photo and a late-model Fiat on the same corner in another sets the mind to thinking about how quickly time does pass. Another book I cannot get enough of is the book detailing the Château de Gudanes (Karina Waters) in the southwest corner of France near the Spanish border. An Australian couple has spent years lovingly renovating this crumbling old chateau – a not-so-secret dream of mine. I bought the book for myself and it arrived last year on my birthday; I spent a glorious day poring over the glossy, romantic pictures and longing for the day when I will finally walk through those glorious and dramatic wrought-iron gates.
Hat Love // My first memory of being a hat wearer was somewhere around 9 years old when I used to sport a burgundy crushed velvet paperboy almost daily – much to my mother’s consternation. When I graduated eighth grade at the tender age of 12, I sported a pale pink percher hat with a plume of feathers trailing behind – inspired, no doubt, by Princess Diana. To this day, I am well-known for always wearing hats, and when I travel I try to always research hat shops and bring a new one home to add to my collection. When I visited Rome I discovered Italian hatmaker Patrizia Fabri (3rd picture) and the Antica Manifatura Cappelli, which is the oldest hat shop in the city, dating back to the early 1900s. From the whimsical to the classics, I love them all and I always feel better, more complete, with a hat upon my head. Even the romance of the blocks themselves, many of which can be over a hundred years old, hold a certain charm and I imagine all the heads (some even royal!) that they have made crowns for over the decades. Another favorite milliner is my friend and oftentimes supplier of toppers The Saucy Milliner, a Canadian milliner who hand blocks hats the traditional way and whose hats have been worn by celebrities from Blake Lively to Canadian ‘First Lady’ Sophie Gregoire Trudeau – and, I suppose, by me. We recently designed a piece together called ‘Daisy ‘ (last picture) Hats, to me, are wearable art, and certainly no one embodies that quite like famed British hatmaker PhilipTreacy (picture 1 & 2), whose creations have wowed us for many years from Ascot to Westminster Abbey.
Colourspiration // Few things are as sensorily evocative as nature and I am so compelled by vibrant colours, which cannot be found anywhere better than the natural world. From the iridescent gorgeousness of butterfly wings to decorously arranged flowers spilling everywhere, nothing lifts the spirits like a pop of fuchsia. I’m currently loving the paintings of TedPim, which so vibrantly depict the beauty of botanicals. And even though it’s not nature per se, I love the vibrancy of Christian Siriano’s colour palette and dream a little dream of someday wearing a boldly hued frock of his, surely inspired by nature.
Credits : 1 @tedpim, 2 @cabinetofdesign, 3 @christopheberreterot for @mcqueenskorea, 4 Billy Porter in @csiriano
This was the last piece chosen by Keegan Connor Tracy for her TAKE OVER. Thank you again Keegan, we really appreciate you taking the time to put this day together.
