No fretting about artwork

Chronicle Herald, Halifax, NS December 10, 2009

Tracey’s musical experience shapes abstract paintings on guitar bodies
By ELISSA BARNARD Arts Reporter. Thu. Dec 10 - 4:46 AM
[Artist and musician Gregg Tracey combines his two artistic passions in new artworks of abstract paintings on guitar bodies in his exhibit, Old Dog, New Tricks, at Utility Gallery, 5224 Blowers St., Halifax, through December.

FOR artist and musician Gregg Tracey a guitar is a siren call.
"The shape of a guitar is a marvel. It’s hard to describe how appealing the shape is."

It has led him to build his own guitars and to make paintings on the instrument’s curved body for his new exhibit, Old Dog, New Tricks; at Utility Gallery, 5224 Blowers St., through December.

"I was thinking of painting guitars," he says. "People kept asking me if I was going to, so I thought maybe I should make some bodies and practice. Then it gained a momentum and a life of its own."

While he may paint functioning guitars someday, he’s excited about these new abstract paintings on the curved Masonite bodies of guitars and ukuleles.

"There’s a real problem in our society. It’s frowned upon to paint a guitar with a paint brush. You have to spray them. I think it’s time to break clear."

While the guitars do not have a sound chamber, frets or a bridge, their bodies suggest that music is inside informing the image. You can imagine rhythm and blues for a sculptural, white, female figure placed against chilly, blue clefts, the elegant fire of flamenco for a red abstract with a heart shape or a celestial folk ballad for two sublime landscapes with tiny figures in distant centres of light.

Tracey, who last exhibited representational paintings and carvings inspired by coastal life, doesn’t know what he’s going to paint before he starts these abstracts.

"I go right to the surface and they lead me."

He builds up layer upon layer of acrylic paint, often in cool blues and warm reds and siennas, adding paper for ridges of texture.
"They don’t come easy, painting never comes easy. It requires huge patience. You think it’s not going to happen and then it does."
Tracey listens to music, not necessarily guitar music, while he’s working in his third-floor studio on his small farm near LaHave.
"I try to listen to one style of music through the whole painting so it takes on a mood."

He listened to Bruce Cockburn when he worked on the two Tone Works abstracts in which he set out to express an acoustic guitar.
"There are all the shapes . . . you’d find on a guitar. They may be placed differently."

There is a spiritual feeling to these works.

"That’s important to me," says Tracey. "When you perform music or paint a painting there’s a feeling inside."

The process is more important to him than the product.
"It’s what goes on inside my head. It’s reverie. It’s very timeless. You go to your studio early in the morning and come down for tea at 10 and it’s one o’clock."

Tracey grew up on a farm in the Annapolis Valley. Both his parents played the guitar and taught him the basics when he was 14.
"Singing was mandatory in the car on Sunday drives and singing harmony was a must, and now I really appreciate it."

Tracey, who became interested in art in his 20s, plays acoustic guitar and writes songs that are as varied as his images.

"One song has a very Irish tone to it, another one is a very sensitive ballad and another one has a touch of rhythm and blues. They all have their individual character.

"I’ve never believed in the idea — they teach it at art school a lot — that everything should be very much the same."

Tracey first became fascinated by the shape of guitars when he started building them five years ago after repairing them for the last 25 years. A friend, Greg Pelkey, in Bridgewater helped him at first.
This exhibit includes his guitars and ukulele, and a new invention which his son calls the "rockin’ stick."

It’s an elongated fret board with a small sound chamber and six strings and it’s perfectly playable. It’s is also a walking stick.

"It’s a regular guitar with a steel bar that goes through the whole thing. This is the prototype."

Tracey also exhibits representational paintings of guitars, including an eye-baffling image of a red telecaster reflected in the chrome of a National Resonator guitar, and woodblock prints of a guitar drawn into large cedar shingles with a chisel and a wire brush.

"I enjoy that. I enjoy all of it, that’s the problem. The other part is I have an old farm. We are gardeners and we do a lot of work there. It’s pretty much non-stop work and that’s how I live.

"My father died last summer and that had a profound effect on me. You realize; I’m next in line. I’ve never worked so hard since. It did something that changed me. You see your own mortality. I’ve had to ask myself: ‘What do I have to say?’ I don’t care to do cover songs anymore. I don’t care to copy photographs anymore."
( ebarnard@herald.ca)