"Intertwined with nature, every day is a new frontier to navigate, interpret, and adapt to. I paint these affective places with life-affirming flora and fauna and figures that inhabit them. Mined from the materials of my life: abstracted memories, generational history and love of nature, I improvise directly in oil on canvas, erasing, rebuilding, applying layers of pigment, textures and spontaneous brushwork as each image determines its own direction."
Photo: Claudia Hernandez
Bio
Tracy McFarlane is a Brooklyn-based artist, born in Illinois. She received her BA in Studio Art and English from Connecticut College and focused on drawing, printmaking and photography. Printing at the Soho Graphic Arts workshop, she exhibited her work in group and solo shows in Connecticut and New York. After a longterm career as an advertising creative director where she produced many successful global campaigns, she developed a full-time studio practice in Gowanus. inspired by a residency at Trestle Studios in 2019, she went on to earn her MFA in painting from Brooklyn College in 2023. The Brooklyn Arts Council awarded her two SuCasa grants in 2024/25 and she now teaches art and shows her work at various shows.
Exhibits and Residencies
11/2025 Bridging Cultures, Convey/er/or Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY
9/2025 Uneasy Terrain, 2 Person Show, Watchung Art Center, Watchung, NJ
8/2025 Elements of Movement BWAC, Brooklyn, NY
5/2025 Common Ground, Watchung Art Center, Watchung, NJ
5/2025 Order/Chaos, BWAC, Brooklyn, NY
10/2024 Gowanus Open Studio Show, Trestle Art Space, Brooklyn NY
9/2024-12/2024 Salon des Refusees Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Brooklyn, NY
2023 and 2024 Gowanus Open Studio Show, Trestle Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
2023 The Oyster Middens Beneath Us, Powerhouse Arts Brooklyn College MFA Thesis Show
1/2019-7/2019 Trestle Artist Residency, Brooklyn, NY
2019 South Brooklyn Open Studios, Trestle Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
2018 Gowanus Open Studio Show, Trestle Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
1986–2018 Advertising Creative Director/AD
1985 Soho Graphic Arts Workshop Exhibition, New York, NY
1985 36th Art of Northeast USA Exhibition, Silvermine, CT
1978–1986 Soho Graphic Arts Workshop, NYC, printmaker
35th Annual Exhibition at the Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT
Grants and Teaching Art
Trio, Upward Bound, Summer Program, Teaching Artist, July 2024/25
Sephardic Multi-Service Aging Center, Teaching Artist, 3-24 to present
Brooklyn Arts Council, 2024/25, SuCasa Grantee
Education
2021–2023 Brooklyn College, MFA Graduate, Painting and Drawing, Class of 2023
1980-2020 NY Academy of Art, School of Visual Arts, NY Studio School, Continuing education
1978 Connecticut College, New London, CT, B.A. in Studio Art and English
Private collections in USA and Europe