James Tracy

     James Tracy was born in the art colony of Nashville, Indiana in 1950. His exposure to the art of T.C. Steele, Gustav Baumann, Glenn Cooper Henshaw, and other local masters led to an early awakening of his natural artistic talent. Since embarking on his professional career over thirty years ago Tracy has explored most drawing and painting media, specializing in oil paintings of rural landscapes, still life, and portraiture. He has won awards in many prestigious exhibitions.     

     “Looking back on over 40 years of making art, I can trace the evolution of what I do now to the many different materials, techniques, subjects, and styles I've experimented with. In my youth, I began making drawings and small paintings of the people and environment around me, the things I knew. Nature was my first and foremost teacher, and I would wander the woods, creek valleys, and farm fields for hours at a time when I was young, soaking up the light textures, and spiritual essence of the natural world. This was and continues to be my prime inspiration.
     After I began formal art instruction I began to experiment with surrealism and abstractions. In the 1960's I began to be influenced by Dali, Jasper Johns, Richard Linder, Frank Stella, Rosenquist, Rauschenburg, and other New York artists; and then Warhol, Pop Art, and the Photo realists. Throughout my career, I have also been inspired by Andrew Wyeth. These investigations and my love of nature came together in the 1970's and early 1980's as a style typified by realistic scenes and objects, often rendered in a hyper-realistic fashion, juxtaposed in what I would term "imagined realities". These experiments lead me to rural and urban scenes, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits painted in a highly detailed realistic style; which I've been exploring for the past 20 years.”