Tracy Hayes

Tracy Hayes (b. 1970) has a BFA in Painting from New Hampshire Institute of Art and a BA in French from University of New Hampshire. Originally from Montreal and Toronto, Tracy currently works and resides between Vermont and New Hampshire. She recently received her MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University College of Lesley Art + Design, in Cambridge, MA. Tracy’s work has been shown and is in collections throughout the Northeast.

Tracy’s work was featured in ‘Marking | Folding Time’ on view April 13-28, 2024.

Join us for an Artist Talk with Tracy in person at See Saw Art and also on Instagram Live on Saturday, April 27 at 3:00pm est at @see.saw.art_.

“The ‘Obliteration Scrolls’ are personal. Initially, unlimited access to paper and indulging in a work preference of drawing in intimate settings morphed into an interest in the fickle nature of language and story. Considering poetry as “accepted” text-based subversion to dominant social structures which set rules/norms, I sought clues of what was unsettling, destabilizing and… potentially threatening to mature the syntax within personal visual language. The nature of obscuring while proceeding into the next section led to imagining that this exploration of freedom might be a version of a book, though not literally.

There is a need to uncover a space which is anticipated as welcoming yet sensed as simultaneously repellant and sets up visceral tension between anticipation and access, seduction and danger. These juxtapositions become meditations on larger psychological states.”

Also on view in ‘Marking | Folding Time’ is a collection of small works, ‘Call and Response.’

“In thinking of small works to offer for ‘Marking | Folding Time’, I returned to thinking about marks as a record of presence. 

But as with the ‘Obliteration Scrolls’, I am constantly trying to find ways to counteract natural tendencies towards unity, to “hack my system” by partially obscuring previous as I move forward through the work. 

As I’d created these works within a sketchbook as open-sided (left-and-right), I thought about what could apply the same thinking from ‘Obliteration Scrolls’, to echo the intent behind obscuration, within the constraints of a non-scrolled format?

Separating these from their partners and re-sequencing them with others provided that solution, melding qualities of both marking and folding time.

As with the relationship of the viewed slices of the rolled ‘Obliteration Scrolls’, the dialogues that emerged between these proved more interesting for their unpairing-and-repairing.”

Tracy’s work was featured in ‘Push Pull,’ on view January 13-28, 2023.

“Obliteration Scrolls emerged initially as a response to unlimited access to material and indulging in a working preference of drawing in intimate settings, and morphed into an interest in the fickle nature of language and story.

How ‘obliteration’ might present visually became a recurring thought and has since guided the work, operating from the framework of: “is it everything? Or… nothing?”

Tracy’s work was featured in ‘All Together Now,’ on view February 11-26, 2023.

“Mixed media works emerge in series as explorations of charcoal, acrylic and oil on paper and canvas. Imagery remains vaguely subterranean and emerges from a process that is as reliant upon drawn media as upon painted. Earthen references are reiterated within tonal palette. There are glimpses of what lies within, though entry is barred. Billowing shapes hold viewer aloft and safely at a distance as access points emerge in one instance to then break apart in another. Structures appear briefly only to dissipate and dissolve. These works seek to make sense of a world just outside of reach, beckoning yet elusive.”