Tracy Spadafora
Persistence of Nature
Tracy Spadafora is a contemporary painter whose encaustic and oil works explore the evolving relationship between humans and the environment. Working with wax, pigment, layered imagery, and found visual references, she creates richly textured surfaces that consider transformation, time, decay, and the traces of human activity on the natural world.
Across her practice, Spadafora moves between abstraction and landscape, transforming overlooked surfaces and environmental imagery into new visual landscapes. Her Left Behind: Visual Histories series, currently featured on 1stDibs, focuses on peeling paint, rust, corrosion, and the weathered surfaces of dumpsters, using these ordinary objects as records of place, time, and human presence.
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Selected Works
Each work is an original painting created using encaustic and oil on wood panel. Click individual works for details or purchase.
Available works typically range from $2,000–$2,500.
About the Work
Spadafora's Left Behind: Visual Histories series begins with an unlikely subject: the dumpster. Drawn to the accumulated evidence of wear on these ubiquitous containers, she photographs, draws, and paints their surfaces, translating peeling paint, rust, corrosion, and layered marks into richly colored compositions.
Rather than simply documenting these surfaces, Spadafora transforms them into paintings that move between observation and abstraction. Layers of encaustic and oil recreate the visual complexity of weathered metal while obscuring and revealing fragments of imagery and text, creating surfaces that suggest both physical deterioration and the passage of time.
This attention to overlooked materials connects her recent work to a broader practice centered on environmental change and the persistence of nature. Across her DNA, Evolve, and Left Behind series, Spadafora considers how human activity shapes the environment and how systems of growth, destruction, and renewal remain in constant flux.
Biography
Tracy Spadafora is a contemporary artist based in Massachusetts. She earned her BFA in Painting with a minor in Art History from Boston University in 1989 and her MFA in Painting from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1995.
Spadafora has exhibited extensively throughout New England, including solo and two-person exhibitions at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, Aidron Duckworth Museum, and Concord Center for Visual Art. Her work has also been presented at the Danforth Art Museum, Fitchburg Art Museum, ArtsWorcester, and Fountain Street Gallery. She has taught painting, drawing, and encaustic techniques for decades and has led workshops at institutions and organizations throughout the Northeast, including the International Encaustic Conference.
Inquiries
For works not currently listed online or additional information, please contact the gallery.