In 1976 Tracy’s parents sold everything, left Barrie, Ontario (where Tracy was born in 1970), and drove out west. They ended up settling on an isolated oceanfront property facing directly south, on the Comox Peninsula. Growing up a stone’s throw from the shoreline Tracy witnessed ever changing and stunning views as well as dramatic winter storms. These vivid childhood experiences sparked Tracy’s dream of becoming an artist.
Image: Moving onto our waterfront property in 1976 – the trailer we drove across Canada in and four of us lived for a year.
Tracy’s first formal art instruction was at the local North Island College with instructors Brian Scott, David Maclean and Alan Burgess where she received many hours of practice drawing the model. In 1993 Tracy acquired her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia, with instructors Ken Lum and Judith Williams, who taught her to think about how images have the power to change people’s perceptions of the world around them.
To pay for her schooling as well as travel (she traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East), Tracy spent many seasons treeplanting in the interior as well as coastal B.C. During this period, she also went to the Atlin Art Centre where students were encouraged to always be “responding to the world around them” and “working from the centre of their being”. These experiences not only deepened Tracy’s connection to nature, but now she felt she had a responsibility to help protect it.
Image: “Loss of Fate”, acrylic on canvas, 48″ x 60″, 2001
At this time Tracy knew that in her art, she wasn’t interested in imitating what nature looked like, but wanted to also relate the current human condition. In her abstract painting, “Loss of Fate”, she paints a shifting landscape, also resembling a gameboard, with a native sun melting into the black centre. In her later “Totem Series”, imaginary totems guide the viewer’s eye down mysterious pathways. In these works Tracy alludes to a drastically changing world; but one where humans are guided into unknown but hopefully positive directions.
Image: “Eastern Sky”, acrylic on canvas, 18″ x 24″, 2001
In 1998, Tracy began teaching art to adults and kids, eventually gravitating to Betty Edward’s landmark book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, as a method for helping others to “learn to see”.
Tracy has exhibited her work in galleries all over the province; such as at the Prince George Art Gallery, Island Mountain Arts gallery in Wells and Nanaimo Art Gallery. She was an artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, in 2005, when she was 5 months pregnant. In 2008 she attended the Toni Onley Artists Project in Wells with artists Peter Von Tiesenhausen and David Alexander which inspired her to paint large-scale acrylic work.
Tracy, with her husband and son, lives in the Comox Valley within a strong community of family and friends and enjoys local world-class mountain-biking and skiing. She is currently working on a new body of work addressing environmental themes and is teaching private group classes at the Gordon Ross Studio.
Artist Statement
My paintings are about the relationship between humans and nature – how we are guided by nature and also how nature is impacted by us.
With climate change and increasing human development pushing into wild areas, our experience of nature is becoming less predictable and even a bit strange. I’ve heard of usually timid deer becoming aggressive in suburbs, encountered entire hillsides of pine forest turning a bright red and the severity and frequency of weather events is increasing.
This all fuels my creativity. By merging the real and unreal or changing the context for a subject or form, I am challenging my own preconceived notions of how I think things should be.
Image: ” They Never Leave Us”, acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 30″, 2011
