Tracy Thomason
Region: Northeast
I make textural paintings built from classical materials, digging into the ancient, earthly, and tangible. I hand-mix marble dust and paint into a claylike material that I carefully apply to rough linen surfaces. Layered in sequence with surgical precision, over time a mottled rocky ground forms, revealing itself to have more in common with something etched into a cave or washed up like rubble on a beach. Marks fluctuate between quick stabs of stone carving tools, knife slices, and the gentle insistence of a powdery drawn line. I apply sculpted abstract glyphs as if in meditation, snapping the works into graphic clarity. Something slim may be a bullhorn, a book, a brain. Denser shapes often reference the female body, or summon nocturnal landscapes—form, color, and process as language. Gesture and materiality that travels backward and inward in an effort to move forward. These painting are meant to be read in addition to being seen and felt.