Gregg Tracey, Houston North Gallery, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

Making art is a daily adventure. Working in a variety of media allows me to express in many ways the subjects I explore. Art is, for me, an intuitive journey. It’s a way of discovering my inner voice--what I have to offer. 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.I continue to do art because it gives back more than it takes--an evening of painting after I am too tired to do anything else will more often than not leave me feeling refreshed.

Art, to me, is like creating 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 a song 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 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’s life is a creative act, whether he is making woodcut prints, paintings, hand-built guitars or the garden where he grows much of their food--they all express an attitude for finding the spirit within and expressing it through one’s work.

Gregg was born on May 6, 1950, and raised on a farm in rural Annapolis Valley. His childhood focused on wildlife and the natural world around him. After a year long adventure to an art school in Mexico in 1971, he settled atop a drumlin hill in Lunenburg Co. Nova Scotia.

In the basement of his hand-built house he creates exquisite guitars from local white spruce and the more exotic rosewood. He also makes ukuleles and a few unusual instruments.

In his 3rd story loft studio he creates indigo woodcut prints, hand-printed with simple elegance, imparting to each piece the spirit of its creator entwined with a reverence for those creatures who share his world.

He also creates paintings in a variety of medium. The latest express his life-long passion for the guitar. Using luthier skills, he has created unique 3-dimentional guitar bodies upon which he has painted abstract images conjured up from his years of experience as artist/musician/song-writer.

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 a n 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

“[Tracey’s] images depict an intimate connection with nature, and they honour tradition. - Joanne Jefferson, Chronicle Herald, Halifax, May 2, 2007

Margaret Atwood has purchased his work and written about him in the New York Times (Nov. 16, 2003).

Gregg is represented in the Nova Scotia Art Bank. His work is also part of
the Bronfman’s Claridge Collection in Montreal, Adriene Clarkson’s private collection and the Robert C. Hain Collection in Nova Scotia.

No Fretting About Art Work, Chronicle Herald, - Elisa Barnard (December, 2009)

Recent Exhibitions

Old Dog, New Tricks, Utility Gallery, Halifax, NS, December, 2009.