Artist: Tracey Kessler

Title: Gracious Wonder

Medium: Mixed-media

Dimensions: 24 X 36 in

Tracey Kessler's work reflects the calm she finds in the daily interactions and conversations with acquaintances, friends, and family. Though inspired throughout the turbulent times of our modern era, her work (influenced by such artists as Tapies, Frankenthaler, Mitchell, Polke and Burri ) possesses a soothing, calm and organic feel clearly paralleled by her California lifestyle. Using a wide variety of mediums including oils, acrylic, inks, charcoal, gesso and natural pigments, the works begin to have their own voice.

From the artist's statement: "In my work of process painting, the experience of painting can be more important than the outcome. The goal being process the creative act itself, without concern, and my layered abstractions are born and transformed during time moving forward. I explore the circumstances of life through a diversity of media, textures and gestures, which imbue my compositions with vitality and a sense of motion. My work mediates between turbulence and joy. As layers of material are melded and molded by hand, time and their reactions with each other, the beauty of the piece begins to appear. I often use references from nature, history and design elements in my mixed-media work to explore color, themes and objects."