Gregg Tracey
Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, Canada,
"Making art is a daily adventure, an intuitive journey - my way of discovering my inner voice. Working in a variety of media allows me to more fully express the subjects I explore. I strive to live life and art in the same breath...to live my life as a creative act each day. Creative drive is intense while at the same time comforting to me, creating a pool of knowledge developed over my lifetime as an artist.
Art is like a puzzle, discovering my unique pieces and then trying to understand how they fit together in a way which I recognize as me. I love to play one of my songs on my guitar while I study a painting I’m working on. When I play back the recorded song while I paint, a wholeness wraps around the experience. No matter which field I work in, my other mediums are being honed and influenced by what I am doing. I very much believe the whole of my work is greater than the sum of its parts”.
- Gregg Tracey
Gregg was born May 6, 1950. Raised on a small family farm in rural Annapolis Valley, his childhood was one of deep connection with the woods around the farm, its wildlife, its serenity. After travelling in Europe in the late ‘60’s, followed by a year-long adventure to an art school in Mexico in 1971, he and his high school sweetheart, Nancy, settled atop a drumlin hill farm in Lunenburg Co. Nova Scotia.
Life itself became his art: his hand-built house/studio; growing organic food in his Heartsong gardens; paintings that shine light into the world; creating exquisite guitars (and a harp) from local white spruce and exotic rosewood; carving wooden spoons and jewelry; writing songs; recording an album of his original songs: and woodcut print making. On the earthly canvas of his secluded farm, he allowed himself to search for the spirit within and express it through his art.
In his 3rd floor loft studio Gregg taught himself how to create woodcut prints by carving an image into a pine board, inking the board, laying paper over the inked image and intuitively rubbing his hand over the paper to capture the image. These woodcut prints are pulled with simple elegance (no machinery) imparting to each piece the spirit of its creator entwined with a reverence for the creatures who shared his world.
Cancer took Gregg’s life on June 1 2023.
His dream? “My dream is that my art will shine light into the world long after I’m gone.”
Gregg is represented in the Nova Scotia Art Bank. His work is also part of many collections including the Bronfman’s Claridge Collection in Montreal, and the Robert C. Hain Collection in Nova Scotia. Margaret Atwood has purchased his work and mentioned it in the New York Times (Nov. 16, 2003).
Press Releases:
“. . . a hint of wood grain from the printing block elevates tethered dories into an ethereal realm; two whales in an embrace capture the miracle of connection. One feels a surprising reverence for these pieces that seem imbued with stillness and truth.”
- Susan Bone, Bridgewater Bulletin, July 21, 2004
“ Tracey has done an amazing amount of high voltage work for his large exhibit at Houston North Gallery . . . art is a spiritual process and not about replicating an image for Tracey . . . a wonderful unruly process . . . connected to his personal experiences of place”
- Elissa Barnard, Chronicle Herald, Halifax, August 7, 2004
“For artist and musician Gregg Tracey a guitar is a siren call. . . . It has led him to build his own guitars and to make paintings on the instrument’s curved body. . While the guitars do not have a sound chamber, frets or a bridge, their bodies suggest that music is inside informing the image. . . . There is a spiritual feeling to these works.”
- Elissa Barnard, Chronicle Herald, Halifax, December 10, 2009