TRACEY ADAMS | ABOUT

Our inventory fluctuates – please contact the gallery for current works.

Artist Statement

My lifelong interests- including music, science, mathematics and art- are constantly being woven and re-woven into my paintings and works on paper. Because of my background as a musician, I have a strong feeling for musical metaphors and serial systems. My interest in music is especially present both in terms of the visual intervals and patterns that appear in my work; physical engagement and a sense of performance is always part of my studio practice.

I am drawn to intersections: ideas that might seem to be at opposite ends of a continuum, like the organic and the geometric, are brought together in my work. My starting points vary: they can come from something personal, something glimpsed or from my experience of a piece of music. As a graduate student, I spent a lot of time around John Cage; his early influence, to this day, informs my studio practice of intention and chance.

My works attempt to create environments that I want to find in myself: they represent internal worlds that I am attempting to externalize. My pieces are quiet, and are meant to express a form of serenity. However beauty is expressed, however it is felt, has to do with the feeling of calm, inside and out. I love what the late jazz musician Charlie Haden said: The artist’s job is to bring beauty into a conflicted world

Each work and each series is a kind of diary of my explorations. My ideas evolve as I apply my intellect, my sense of order and my sense of play to the images and materials at hand. I start with a kernel of an idea in mind, but somewhere between intention and chance I always find new energies and new directions. I’m never quite sure how a painting will look until it’s finished.