Tracy Grayson

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

My paintings typically reference, use, or conflate seemingly opposing terms: abstraction/figuration, nature/technology, analogue/digital, figure/ground, past/ present, photography/ painting. Often, the two systems are literally layered on top of each other, as if we are looking at one filtered through its other. And among the devices I use, to create these screen-like effects in paint, are the screens of actual electronic devices mediate and filter most experience: the recognizable shapes of iPhones and iPads (depicted in actual size). Sometimes it is just their outlines, traced and overlapping to produce abstract patterns; at other times, the shapes are filled in to function as solid geometric forms. But in either case, these are arrayed across the surface of another image, a landscape or marine scene visible underneath. Earlier works used the familiar 4 x 6” format of photographic snapshots, now rendered obsolete by all those digital screens. Later works deploy strategies of 20th Century abstract painting - stripes, grids, concentric squares – laid over figurative scenes that recall 19th Century paintings of sunlit skies, sinking ships, trees, beaches, etc. In addition to these recurring motifs, I have started including credit cards (already an abstraction and a kind of mediation). Another series was created with masking tape, tracing its shape and torn ends to generate abstract pictures of stripes (which are, at the same time, literal depictions of tape); in a related...

Artwork