About Tracy Lévesque

Untitled Autoportrait Van Gogh's Little Sister Tribute to No. 9 (Self-Portrait) Self-Portrait in Retrospect

"Art is not a luxury. Art is a philosophy on life. Creation is the key to survival. I am an oil painter of people, things and places; an oil painter of existence. My work, quite simply, is an expression of my life and the experiences I have had. Like a memory, a painting is a frozen moment in time brimming full of subjective meaning. It will never mean the same thing twice, it will never mean the same thing to the same person, but in the end, it will always mean something because it was created with purpose, passion and a true intent to celebrate existence."

- Tracy Lévesque

Tracy Lévesque is a self-taught contemporary Northern American artist. She grew up with a pencil in her hand at every moment covering paper, table tops, walls and even her own body with sketches and fantastical drawings. Growing up in rural New England, Lévesque's mentor and greatest influence was Nature itself. She wanted to be able to show the world the wonder in all that she saw by recreating it from her own perspective. Looking at her current work it is hard to believe that she actually started out as a realistic artist before finally realizing that it is impossible for a human being to compete with the perfection of the natural world. All the artist can do is interpret what he or she sees, believing that there is no school that can teach what is innately human or how a person will learn to express his or her own existence in this world. For Lévesque, existence has always meant creation and life is the canvas on which she has written her destiny.

Lévesque's father, an artist himself, was an enormous influence on Tracy's early work. He emphasized the presence of creation in every living thing and immortalized art in his daughter's eyes as a way to communicate what cannot be said with words or seen with the all-too-deceptive eyes. Art was not about convention or even about creating beauty, it was about trying to portray the innate uniqueness in every living thing whether it be a person's face or a flower's petal. Through his influence Lévesque learned to see beauty 'in' even humanity's ugliness and to appreciate the indispensable fact that emotional and mental content permeate physical reality with truth.

Obsessed with details, Lévesque sought out the select nature inherent in every thing she saw and pushed her skills to the full extent of her ability. Line, colour, texture and even form itself were her means to this unattainable end. In love with line, pen drawings and ink paintings were the foundations for what would eventually lead Lévesque to develop her unique style of painting and abandon her realistic work. She completed her first oil painting at age 14 and was thoroughly disgusted by the experience, vowing never to pick up a paint brush again. For 7 years she kept true to her promise, abandoning art completely and then one day began painting again, this time insatiably. No matter how hard she tried to escape it, Lévesque had an undeniable urge to create. So, in 1999, Lévesque began her painting career as a professional artist. Since then she has shown work in New York City, Boston and in other various outlets in New England. Her work is featured in many private collections in the US and in Canada.

Lévesque officially retired from oil painting in the summer of 2009 and may return to the canvas again someday, but that we will never know.

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