Craig Tracy

Art Brokerage: Craig Tracy American Artist: b. 1967. Tracy was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. The city's colorful and vibrant culture played an integral role in developing Tracy's passion for art, including his family's tradition of painting each other's faces in celebration of Mardi Gras. His parents nurtured his individuality and creativity, with Tracy attributing their "Flower Power" and "Power to the People" mentalities as being responsible for how he views art and life. Tracy worked as an illustrator at the age of 20, but creating industrial and commercial imagery didn't energize him or interest him. He retired from illustrating six years later, freeing himself to explore what he loved, including painting on various surfaces. This led to painting on faces and bodies, which he found strangely motivating and powerful. His passion for art reignited, and after researching bodypainting further, Tracy realized he had found his calling and became a body painter. His first series of bodypainting images, titled "The Nature Series," was well received, leading him to travel to Europe to work with other body painters. The compositions of Tracy's works are inspired by a specific body shape or pose combined with culture, nature and intellectual constructs. Artists who have been an inspiration to Tracy include Norman Rockwell, M.C. Escher, Boris Vallejo, Chuck Close, Robert Mapplethrope, H.R. Giger and Gottlieb Helnwein. Tracy's process unites a number of techniques, including traditional paintbrushing, airbrushing, finger-painting, sponging, splattering and dripping. The majority of his art is bodypainting captured through photography, and amazingly, it requires little in the way of digital and non-digital manipulation. Tracy typically spends a full day creating a bodypainting. Listings wanted.