My lifelong interests – music, science, mathematics and art – are constantly being woven and re-woven into my paintings and works on paper. Because of my background as a musician, I have a strong feeling for musical metaphors. My interest in music is especially present both in terms of the visual intervals and patterns that appear in my work; physical engagement and a sense of performance is always part of my studio practice.

I am drawn to intersections: ideas that might seem to be at opposite ends of a continuum, like the organic and the geometric. My starting points vary: they can come from something personal, something glimpsed or from my experience of a piece of music. As a graduate student, I spent a lot of time around John Cage; his early influence, to this day, informs my studio practice of intention and chance.

My work attempts to create environments that I want to find in myself: they represent internal worlds that I am attempting to externalize and share. My pieces are minimal and balanced, yet full of rhythm and asymmetry. However life’s beauty is expressed, however it is felt, has to do with a feeling of calm, inside and out. I love what the late jazz musician Charlie Haden said: “The artist’s job is to bring beauty into a conflicted world.”

Each work and each series is a visual diary of my explorations. My ideas evolve as I apply my sense of order and play to the images and materials at hand. I may start with an idea in mind, but somewhere between intention and chance I find new directions. I’m never quite sure how a painting will look until it’s finished.

A 2016 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, Tracey Adams has been an exhibiting artist for over 35 years. She has participated in over 175 solo and group exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Monterey Museum of Art, Fresno Art Museum and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Adams’ paintings are included in the permanent collections of the Bakersfield Museum of Art, Crocker Museum, Hunterdon Art Museum, Monterey Museum of Art, Fresno Art Museum, Tucson Art Museum and Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Her work has been featured in Encaustic Art: the complete guide to creating fine art with wax, Lissa Rankin, Watson-Gupthill, 2010, and Paper + Wax, Techniques in Handmade Paper and Encaustic, Michelle Belto, North Light Books, 2012. She has also received an Artist’s Grant from the Ministry of Culture, Slovak Republic, an Artist’s Grant from the U.S. Department of State and an Artist’s Grant from the Community Foundation of the Monterey Peninsula. Her immersive Installation, Primordial Soup, was exhibited recently at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.