This piece describes an open landscape, and it differs significantly from most of the artist’s paintings because of that. Usually there was something to catch the eye — a barn, a road or a tree — but here, despite the path between the two fields, the viewing remains unobstructed. I think that this peculiarity marks a minor compositional and stylistic deviation, which signals the artist’s readiness to evolve creatively and try new things. This is the stuff that makes people come back for more; the changes and surprises within the familiar framework. Additionally, we see some green color, a rare hue in the artist’s palette. It gives the yellow a friendly tinge unwitnessed (by me) before; the only familiar color here is the pale and coolly neutral blue, which serves as a style tag and links the painting to others. In the context of the artist’s oeuvre, this piece may fall under the category of “transitional,” or “experimental.”
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I have no idea why the artist called this piece “A May Day” — to me, the name “An Autumn Day ” seems much more appropriate. Perhaps this is an irony of a sort, a weather sarcasm, if you will. I may be choosing the wrong path discussing this painting as if it were depicting autumn, but I just don’t see any other. I would be very interested in your opinions on this matter. Anyway, autumn looms schematically large: the leaves, when loosing their color, usually form random, particolored patterns — but here the hues are accurately distributed between three areas, gray, purple and yellow; as a result the color diversity is reproduced on the macro level of the whole forest. The colors need to be mixed in the viewer’s mind in order to elicit the mentioned seasonal association. Though the process is probably instant, it is still perceptible, like a flash, akin to those of inspiration.
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Quite a complex composition unfolds before the viewer. Two of the most prominent elements from the artist’s arsenal spread on the panel: the barns and the trees; they interact dynamically, both in color and placement. I think that this piece can be divided into two acts, the first, the main one, happening in the foreground — it offers some friction and contrast, and the second, the low-key act that takes place in the background, and which absorbs at least some of the electricity generated in the front. To my mind, in the context of Tracy’s artwork as a whole, this painting conciliates two contradicting concepts (and that makes it more compelling). On the one hand, its composition is notably uncharacteristically crowded but, on the other hand, it speaks most eloquently about the characteristics of the artist’s style. To a critic, such a piece always presents a find and a must examine item.
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A colorful piece, this painting can be viewed from afar and perceived as a magical asymmetrical flower, each color area representing a petal. That way it can appear as close as it gets to abstract art without actually containing any obvious abstract elements. But asymmetry plays a principal role without the involvement of a different stylistic interpretation: the composition, though heavily careening, can be naturally divided into two halves, the left and the right, both of which would include similar but uneven geometrical forms. However, they become commensurable in terms of palette. The right half would include all of the purple trees, with a thin stripe of yellow, blue and the gray-blue of the sky, while the left half would display a more even distribution of all the other colors except the purple. The hot orange grove compensates for its smaller size by its bright hue, and finds an analogous cooler counterpart in the purple forest. The blue of the driveway mediates between the two, as both contain traces of that color. The multiplicity and versatility of colors on the left find a stabilizing counterpart in the form of the single purple block on the right. Thus, geometrical asymmetry can be softened by palette correlation.
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Tracy Helgeson’s artwork comprises relatively few elements: pure and saturated colors, often astonishingly intense; trees, barns and roads; well-marked lines, diagonal or straight; and a great deal of imagination that helps to organize all of these features into clean and straightforward compositions. In a way, her pieces can be compared to the first machines, which consisted of a few parts — but never failed to perform. Although all parts are indispensable, color often steps in as the main painterly propeller: the mentioned objects do not require much detail and palette naturally takes precedence. As a result, many paintings carry a powerful emotional load that the intense colors emanate. Tracy prefers warm, sometimes outright hot yellows, reds and purples; she willingly experiments with value, particularly with shade, which adds a touch of dusky mysticism to the colors, while retaining their unusual intensity. I believe that her unorthodox palette might be her most important artistic accomplishment — one that many artists spend careers on achieving.
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