Artomatic 2009 Artist Interview: Tracey Clarke

June 18th, 2009 by Tammy Vitale

Tracey's work hangs with stories posted by each. The work is haunting and mystical even without the mythology she weaves around them (which is good since I don't have the stories to share with you). As you will see from her interview, she is a woman of few words. But that's okay, because it leaves me more space to share her work with you (I neglected to get the titles on the remaining paintings – I shot them on a return trip knowing I'd have no problem knowing whose work they are. Didn't think about titles. Sorry!).

The red bird in "The Guide" stands out starkly against the subtle greys of the rest of the picture and is what first caught my eye. Then the rest of her work drew me in. I can't say which I like the best because they are all gloriously wonderful. I could make up stories forever about the llama and the butterflyies!

How many ArtOMatics have you done, and if more than 1, what keeps you coming back? First Time.

Where can one find you this year?

I am on the third floor on the south east corner facing the ballpark.

How did you choose what to show at ArtOMatic?

I have a very definite direction and style with a cohesive body of work, so it was really a matter of what would fit the wall.

How long have you been making art? What do you do when/if you hit a slump?

On and off up until about ten years ago when my husband encouraged me to leave my vet tech job and paint it full-time. But I have really just figured it out what that means and what it requires in the last few years.

I get to the easel when I am stuck. I have learned to always move toward the work instead of away from it. I have a notebook full of ideas, so there is never an excuse not to paint.

Who are your favorite artists and what inspiration do you draw from them?

I don't have any favorite artists. I do have countless favorite works of art, though.

Have you had a chance to look around ArtOMatic yet this year? Do you have any instant favorites? any returning favorites?

Pam Rogers. Third floor, also. Brilliant work.

Where else can we see your work?

www.traceyclarke.com

and at the Athenaeum in

Alexandria

and at FCCA in

Fredericksburg

in November 2009.

Anything else you'd like to add about yourself, your work, art in general?

Nope.

thought for the day: Thomas Berry, ecologist and theologian says that we are at a time between stories. It is as though "the old story about who we are and how to live doesn't work anymore, and we don't know that the new story is. Yet we desperately want to find this new story."

(following is an excerpt from "The Power of Myth," Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers)

Campbell: Myths are so intimately bound to the culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them…

Moyers: You speak of the poets and artists. What about the clergy?

Campbell I think our clergy is really not doing its proper work. It does not speak about the connotations of the metaphors but is stuck with the ethics of good and evil. The difference between a priest and a shaman is that the priest is a functionary and the shaman is someone who has has an experience…

Moyers: We have lost the art in our society of thinking in images..

Campbell: …Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world…the ideas and poetry of the traditional cultures…come out of an elite experience, the experience of people particularly gifted, whose ears are open to the song of the universe….