TRACEY PHYSIOC BROCKETT portfolio contact about blog portfolio / The Sagas: large scale work on paper I work at the intersection between the emotional and the rational, the subconscious and the intentional, the provisional and the systemic. I begin with random, expressive gestures; in my larger paintings there is underpainting in acrylic and ink. I begin to work out color and other compositional ideas bit by bit, transitioning to oil and pigment stick when the surface has been covered and a plan has begun to emerge. Order gradually is imposed on chaos. I follow the painting’s lead. I struggle to listen to what is being offered. I throw in my thoughts from time to time, about particle physics and the weather, human history, current events, like some metaphysical stream of consciousness. I attempt to see how the various elements react with one another... a meandering line may somehow capture a previously unseen connection... some ethereal essence ... so another layer becomes here concise, there a shadow, an echo. Both adding and scraping away, using pouring and tilting the paper, rubbing and layering the color with brush, pen and fingers to form a kind of scaffolding or grid that is then complicated and made unlikely or even impossible in places, pushed until it has become total chaos before being rescued to some sort of momentary clarity, the process left traceable, the past visible. In the larger pieces, oil pigment stick is burnished into the surface to create areas of translucence and opaqueness, where areas mutate and shift. Solid mass becomes fluid, edges hazy, while something else, swirling, becomes dense. Time runs through the picture plane like a river, shifting the perspective the way the eye makes a saccade through a room, picking up details to memorialize, even as they vanish or pivot away. Mass appears as if abstracted thought has become crystalized, a figure back-lit in a doorway, an object illuminated by passing headlights from the road, leaving after- images burned on the retina. So the painting is asking “Did I see that? What was that? In The Weeds #5 2021 acyrlic and oil stick on paper 50 x 50 In The Weeds #3 2020 acrylic, pigment stick and collage on paper 47.5 x 50 In The Weeds #2 2020 acrylic and pigment stick on paper 50 x 50 In The Weeds #4 2020 acrylic, ink, pigment stick on paper 50 x 50 detail In The Weeds #4 The Net 2020 acrylic and pigment stick on paper diptych, 50 x 60 over all detail, The Net Untitled 2020 acrylic, ink, pigment stick on paper 30 x 30 Ashes 2020 acrylic, pigment stick on paper 30 x 30.25 Ashes, detail, bottom middle In The Weeds #1 2019 acrylic, pigment stick and oil on paper 54.5 x 50 Crying Wolf 2018-2019 acrylic, ink, marker, oil and pigment stick on paper 50 x 50 Holy Weeping 2019 acrylic, ink, pigment stick on paper 50 x 84.5 detail, Holy Weeping Sorrow is the Working Title 2018 acrylic, pigment stick and oil on paper 38 x 45 Signifiers 2017 acrylic, ink, oil and pigment stick on paper 50 x 50 Deciding 2017 acrylic, ink, marker, oil and oil stick on paper 48 x 50 Installation, Games of Chance at Augusta Savage Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, September 2019 Cautionary Tale 2017 acrylic, oil and oilstick on paper 50 x 60 The Dark Queen's Last Gambit 2016 acrylic, oil and oilstick on paper 60 x 50 inches private collection Woolgathering 2015 acrylic and oilstick on paper 60 x 50 inches The Blind Old Queen 2015 acrylic and oilstick on paper 60 x 50 inches Why THere Is no Room For You 2015 acrylic, oil and oilstick on paper 50 x 60 Unspooling 2016 acrylic, ink, oil stick on paper 48 x 48 The Sagas 2012 acrylic and oil stick on paper 38 x 50 inches private collection How We Got Here 2015 acrylic, oil stick on paper 40 x 40 Starsailing 2013 acrylic and oil stick on paper 50 x 56 Dancing The Motes On the Edge of a Feather 2013 acrylic and oil stick on paper 38 x 58 © copyright Tracey Physioc Brockett, 2021 all rights reserved