Quick Facts
Biography
Tracey Adams is an American abstract painter and printmaker. She was born in 1954 in Los Angeles, the daughter of a ceramist. Her artworks reflect a strong interest in musical patterns, rhythms, lyrical compositional elements and what she calls a sense of performance. She lives and works in Carmel, California.
Education
Adams earned her BA from Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles in 1978. She studied printmaking and painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1979 to 1981, and earned her master's degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1980.
Awards
Adams has received several fellowships and grants, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2015, a grant from the US Department of State and the Ministry of Culture, and a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship.
Technique
Adams works on panel and paper, using a mixture of paint, encaustic and graphite as well as elements of monotype and collage. Planning and intuition equally inform her process. Often, she will begin a work or a series from the perspective of an exact mathematical formula, planning compositional elements in advance. Other times she will begin with a grid structure then work within that structure, incorporating organic, performative gestures and expressive brushwork. Regardless of where a particular work begins, Adams engages in an open, exploratory process that allows the work to evolve. Often the finished result is a mixture of her original idea and her instinct, creating a composition that captures the essence of the harmony of mind and emotion.
Exhibitions
Adams has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows throughout the United States and in Europe, including the Andy Warhol Museum in Medzilaborce, Slovak Republic.
Collections
Work by Adams is part of the permanent collections of several museums, including the Bakersfield Museum of Artthe Monterey Museum of Art, the Fresno Art Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Her work is also part of multiple corporate collections, including those of Adobe Systems, AT&T Corporate Headquarters, Hallmark Corporate Headquarters, Sony Corporation, Albemarle Corporation, and Intel.
