About me and my work
I muse, therefore I am. My work is concerned with the human condition: identity, spirituality, hope, desire, loss, ennui, virtue, innocence, humor, magic. My hope is that I address these with sophistication; not so much the sophistication of a learned art school graduate, but that of a child in the throes of discovery.
My portraits aim to be more than just likenesses; they are expressions of ineffable and perhaps universal emotions. Likewise, my landscapes intend to express the feelings evoked by sometimes otherworldly environments. These could be thought of as emotional portraits and interior landscapes. Bees symbolize of ways of “bee-ing.” Flowers are.
I enjoy painting because it’s a sensual symphony involving color, intellect, the “feel” of the materials, the joy of experimentation, and deliberate physical action, all of which result in something hopefully beautiful and interesting. It’s also important to me to be involved in a tradition with roots in the Old World.
Around age 22 I migrated from my native Atlanta, Georgia to beautiful Western Massachusetts, where I farmed for a few years before putting myself through art school (BFA 1995, UMass Amherst). A few years later, in pursuit of work that would better support my creative urges (while also becoming a new medium for them), I took some evening courses, and ventured into a career in web design.
I work in a great studio space at One Cottage Street, a nineteenth-century textile factory building complex that has been repurposed to house Riverside Industries, as well as many artists’ studios.
—Trace Meek
