Artist Highlight

Award winning artist Kelly Tracht is quickly becoming known for the unique artistic style she has created, she calls it “Painterly Modernism”.

Tracht describes Painterly Modernism as taking cues from the simplicity and abstraction of modernists like Matisse and Picasso and reinterpreting the art with spontaneous bravura, reminiscent of that of her favorite painter, John Singer Sargent. Simply stated, this means the paint is used in a lively and colorful way that expresses how the artist feels about nature and wildlife.

In Tracht’s Painterly Modernism, she uses the white of the canvas as another dimension of the painting to help describe the shape of the subject.  This creates a fresh interplay between color and white.  She leaves the subject “floating” and loosely outlined so it looks like it has the movement of being alive while spontaneously erupting on the canvas.  Tracht’s style shies away from anything rigid, just like in nature, nothing is perfectly outlined.  Painterly Modernism allows for the subject to shine in all of its imperfections and idiosyncrasies which Tracht feels is what makes nature beautiful and arresting.