AUTHOR: ARTSY CHOW ROAMER

The Paintings of Tracy Burtz

MUSIC FOR THE EYES

New to the gallery, the paintings of artist Tracy Burtz will be on view in an exhibition called “Music for the Eyes” beginning Friday, May 14th running through June 19th. As a part of a continuing series of mini exhibitions throughout the Spring, Thomas Deans Fine Art has been introducing us to several artists within his gallery stable as well as new talent that he has begun representing.

Tracy lives, teaches and works in Westchester, New York and is also represented by East End Gallery in Nantucket, Massachusetts. She is best known for her lovely soft figurative and still life paintings and this post will center around a discussion of her work and style.

EARLY TRAINING

Tracy has been painting for over 45 years. She received her BFA from Boston University School for the Arts and an MFA from Queens College at City University of New York (CUNY). She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the New York Studio School in Paris.

She has had such famous teachers as Elaine de Kooning, an Abstract and Figurative Expressionist artist from the post WWII period, and passionate self-taught artist Leland Bell. She admired both tremendously and felt she learned a great deal about technique and color from them.

For the first twenty years she created and painted in those more traditional ways she had been taught by the schools and her private teachers. But for the last ten years she wanted to forget that formality and try to simply create more freely without barriers or constraints.

THE RESULTS

The results have been a freedom in the movement and lines in her work. There is a smoothness in the gestures and brushstrokes and how she moves the paint around the canvas. Her figures have soft edges with luminous colors that blend into their backgrounds in an effortless sort of way.

There is a quietness and an intimacy to the paintings; creating their own story but allowing the viewer to create one as well. The Green Cup shows the intimacy of an everyday activity like sharing a cup of coffee with a girlfriend while catching up on the day or week.

Or could it be a mother and daughter sharing something very important suggested by the posing of the younger woman’s arms and a sense of sadness displayed between the two. The paintings invite you to use your own imagination to write the story.

Is The Reader telling the fortune of a client sitting in front of her or a Tarot Card reading of some sort? Does the mask on the table imply Mardi Gras and New Orleans or something else altogether? There is a sense of a pause in the conversation to think about what is being presented on the table.

I love the beauty in the lines and colors of the dresses for the women in Last Dance I and II. They both have energy just by depicting the tiredness of the dancers at the end of a long evening. It feels like a private moment of aloneness away from the crowds and other dancers. The updos softly suggest ballerinas.

LUSH USE OF COLOR

Tracy feels this freedom has presented her the chance to simplify her work but at the same time be more specific in how she uses paint, color and abstraction to create tension on the two dimensional canvas surface. That tension is what is helping us decide what the story might really be about.

While she might paint with emotion the “emotional impact of the story becomes secondary” to the basic aspects of picture making for her. There is a whimsical aspect to the work through the use of lush colors and patterns together as displayed in the painting Orange Lilies.

The woman viewed from the back is so feminine with the upsweep of her hair and her colorful bathing suit. Set that on a patterned towel and instead of viewing a block of color suggesting sea or pool she is observing a field of ever more colorful flowers and you see the whimsy.

Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go gives us a more bold use of color in the details of the black dress mirrored in the use of a black cat. The eyes hidden by a summer straw beach hat seem elusive and the bare feet are as sexy as that little black dress. Composition feels very important in these works.

FEMININITY ON DISPLAY

Tracy has made the decision to use women and their everyday lives as subjects. And it isn’t just the literal use, it’s the use of fashion, table skirts, luscious flowers, patterns, body positioning and hairstyling that all speak to a female artist with an eye for feminine details.

I feel that even her still life and landscape paintings manage to convey a female perspective without the literal use of women. The landscapes use light pastels and abstracted color shapes that suggest details like windows, people and plants.

Lee’s Bowl and Nantucket Chocolates are wonderful still lifes obviously curated by a woman for women. Vases of flowers are set on pretty tables with skirts surrounded by various bowls, perfume bottles and glasses all with their own patterns and colors creating a painting with energy that still manages to convey quiet corners laid with Sunday morning rewards.

BODY POSITIONING

While the artist uses women as her subjects they aren’t always literal. Oftentimes there is a soft abstraction to the hands, legs and feet; gestures and lines that imply rather than impose body positioning. But she perfectly captures how women stand, move and sit in her paintings like Your Move, La Sposa and the Studies.

Maybe she has played chess in the past and sits just like this when she does; one hand resting on her thigh and the other in repose while looking for her next move. The legs folded and crossed underneath the body.

There is a tension between the thought needed to play the game and all of the patterns surrounding the board from the dress to the sofa and the wallcovering. Where is the eye to land; the brain to think amidst all the busyness?

I find the Studies to be very interesting. They are small little gems that I assume were done for the purpose of working on larger paintings at a later date. They are more abstracted and softly colored with only small amounts of pattern.

I like that we aren’t sure what the girls are doing. Are they going through the contents of a box like a seashell collection or are they looking through picture albums perhaps? Both look thoughtful as if remembering other pleasant times.

There’s such intimacy in the nudity of the girl with the braid; her legs draped casually over the back of a chair. She looks as if she is daydreaming while looking out the window. A tension is created simply by placing that white dog next to her as he stares straight at the viewer.

La Sposa is probably my favorite in the collection of larger paintings that will be on view. It is simple and straight forward in the composition. A strength comes from using negative space well. A color palette that is more unusual for Tracy’s work speaks to my interior design aesthetic.

Neutrals in beiges, off-whites, browns and blacks can be powerful but soothing and modern. I like the pose that strikes me as a dancers position with a flowing white dress. Seeing the full features of the face while she stares at something just to the side of the viewer somehow seems regretful rather than curious.

CONCLUSION

Tracy is doing beautiful figurative and still life work that warrants the praise she has received. “In making a painting, the abstract elements are very important” to her.

In unlearning everything she had been taught she has found a joy and freedom to create her work in a different way from a different point of view and it’s working very well for her.

If you enjoyed what you read, you might also like other posts under Artful Ideal. You can find other artists that I really love and you might want to add to your own collection. Next week I am on a road trip down South. Look for some coming posts on who to see, what to eat and where to go from there. Until next time…

Cheers,

ArtsyChowRoamer

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