TRACY BOYD ART

STATEMENT   l   OVERALL  l   2009

Joseph Campbell: “The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.”

I create work with human imagery as the focal point because I have a personal relationship to it. I am obsessed with the beauty and ugliness of mankind and the world in which we live. Painting is a very physical and emotional process for me. Through trial and error, the painting evolves through many phases to completion as I search for and recognize the most damaging, loving, and recognizable "being" in it.

I see my art as a statement challenging the dominant institutions and systems of my life in contemporary America. Through grand scale and subtly disturbing imagery I am looking to address the theme of power and entitlement. I primarily paint men probably as a result of having worked in the corporate world. In my studio I have the control to create them and expose the aspects of a person beneath the persona.

SHOW STATEMENT   l   SEATTLE SKETCHES  l   2009

Like many emerging artists, Seattle figurative painter, Tracy Boyd, longs to understand key “art scene” people. Who are they, really? What do they do, and what motivates them? She seeks this understanding because she feels these people are in the way of her artistic journey.

In this series, Boyd depicts Northwest art figures in a manner she imagines will expose aspects of the person beneath the persona. Sometimes using unlikely tools, Boyd loosely applies heavy oil paint in a manner that seems to sculpt her subjects. She often adds graphic elements to the canvas that leave the viewer with more questions than answers. She does this to leave –or perhaps create- ambiguity that emulates people’s lives.