Tracey Adams

Tracey Adams is an American abstract painter and printmaker. She lives and works in Carmel, California. Tracey Adams received her BA from Mount St. Mary College in Los Angeles in 1978. She studied printmaking and painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1979 to 1981, and received her MA from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1980. She has received several scholarships (including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Scholarship in 2015).

Her works rely heavily on musical structure, rhythm, and composition. Her color choices speak to her personal surroundings… The light of water, the smothering power of fog, the colors of the setting sun, and the palette of the lush local flora are all reflected in her work. While still a student, Tracey Adams often had the opportunity to work with composer and artist John Cage, who had a profound influence on her development. She states that her work strives to capture the calm and beauty of an environment that she would like to carry within herself.

Her works reflect a strong interest in musical motifs, rhythms, lyrical compositional elements, and what she calls a sense of performance. Tracey Adams works on panel and paper, using a mixture of paint, encaustic, and graphite, as well as elements of monotype and collage, in an abstract style. Her process is as much about planning as it is about intuition. She often begins a work or series from the perspective of an exact mathematical formula, planning compositional elements in advance. Other times, she begins with a grid structure and then works within it, incorporating organic, performative gestures and expressive brushstrokes. Often, the end result is a blend of her original idea and instinct, creating a composition that captures the essence of the harmony of mind and emotion.

Tracey Adams has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across the United States. Adams' work is included in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Bakersfield Museum of Art, the Monterey Museum of Art, the Fresno Museum of Art, the Tucson Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Her work is also included in several corporate collections, including Adobe Systems, AT&T, Hallmark, Sony Corporation, and Intel.