Feature - Tracy Hayes’ Inspiration

Text by Tracy Hayes // Images by Jamie Harrison & Tracy Hayes // Published Friday 2 September 2011 

Tracy Hayes is an inspirational hair colour expert and her hair colouring videos are amongst the most popular on MyHairDressers.com. In this article Tracy explains where her own inspiration comes from and how she uses that to translate it into her hair colouring.

//Art

My first port of call when I’m looking for inspiration is art and whenever I have the opportunity, I will visit galleries for colour ideas and techniques. So, I have picked three favourite artists that I often refer to for colour ideas.

My first is Mark Rothko who gave great attention to colour, shape, balance and depth - everything a good colourist can use in their work.

Watch Colour Placement >>

Bridget Riley specialises in optical art in many geometric forms, which create the movement of colour. Subtly blending geometric shapes into the sectioning and blending them into the hair is a technique I love and Riley’s work is particularly inspiring.

Watch The Valentina >> 

James Turrell’s work involves the exploration of light and space using natural light and coloured glass and is great inspiration for intricate creative work in colour techniques.

Watch Reflecting Colour >> 

//Theatre

I love to visit the theatre, whenever I can and love the set and costume designs that work together to set the mood of the productions. Colour should have an expressive and emotive quality and this is very often used to tremendous and inspiring effect in good quality theatre. A favourite director of mine is Matthew Bourne, whose work is always slightly controversial but so exciting and can be slightly on the dark side.

//Travel

I am extremely privileged to be able to travel the world both in my personal and working life, and experiencing different cultures and ways of life is always inspiring. As a result I’m always taking pictures of everything around me that I can later translate to my colour work. The gallery (above) contains several of those photographs with explanations below of why they inspire me so much.

Colourful Buildings
This was taken last summer, whilst on holiday in Trancoso, Bahia State in Brazil. I just loved the mix of different tones of greens, blues and pinks. The quality of light differs in different countries and the people in hot countries in the southern hemisphere often use a clash of bright colours that always lifts my mood.

Scarves
A salon where I used to work supported a village in Bolivia, and these are scarves that are made in the village that they sell in the salon.

Flowers
The intensity of the colour of these marigolds is so uplifting. Taken on a yoga retreat in India.

//Friends, family and colleagues

Fire Eater
My friends and the people around me are always an inspiration, and this picture is of Ane, a friend of mine who performs burlesque fire eating in her spare time. Here she is performing at my birthday party in the garden!

Painting by Aitch Peters
This is personal, as it is by a friend, Aitch Peters who painted it with me in mind for a present, so obviously very colourful with lots of depth and texture, just as I aim to achieve in my work!