Tracey Halvorsen received a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art (1993) (where she graduated with the school’s top prize, the Agnes Gund Travelling Scholarship), and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (1998).

‘To Hells Canyon and Back,” Tracey Halvorsen’s first gallery exhibition since 2000, chronicles the physical and emotional journey of loss, rejection, introspection, self-discovery and eventual revival experienced over two years that she describes as “the explosion of everything seemingly stable and defining in my life at the time.”​

The places, objects and abstractions are all facilitators of the same journey, the same search. Mirroring an evolving internal journey to let go of the pull of illusion in life – her paintings refuse to allow only what is “seen and named” to dictate experience. As such, her work continues to move away from what “should be painted,” towards an exploration of what “must be painted”.