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Tracy MacEwan - Biography

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John Tracy MacEwan began his artistic career, when he was thirteen with his Mother's Polaroid camera. What began as a lark pretending the camera was an imaginary space device became a facinating endeavor lured on by the pictures that he created. Forty years of making photographs has included most film formats, including digital photography for the last nine years. His interests include: collage, mixed media, video and performance art in addition to paintings. Tracy graduated from the University of Washington with a BA and the University of Oregon with an MFA. He was an assistant professor of photography and visual design at the University of Oregon (1993-2000), Willamette University (2000-2001) and Western Oregon University (2001). In 1995, he was awarded an artist residency at Yaddo (an art colony) in Saratoga Springs, New York, where painting became his preferred way of working and thus he has painted full-time since then.

Tracy's background of photographing landscapes of the American West remains central to much of his work today. During his Yaddo residency, he had the opportunity to explore painting, the new media and trying to connect abstract thought to the canvas. He had already begun marking the surface of his photographs and creating reconstructions of the land using collage "a world influenced by my interest in Jan Dibbets and Robert Rauschenberg's work." He is still excited by the sheer power of color and the challenge of making an intellectual and imaginary connection with the land. He says that "within the physical realm of paint, I am fascinated with both the use of color and the surface of the painting , and I look for almost any structure or excuse to work with color." One can see various shapes in his work that are repeated, not necessarily recognizable structures, sometimes mysterious and sometimes landscape like, but always appealing with interesting surfaces, textures, and color. He states that he wants his work to have a certain painterly beauty and to stimulate the imagination.