Preston Trombly

I have been an artist for most of my life.  First as a musician—composer, performer, and conductor - and for a number of years I have been focusing on and working in the visual arts.  

For me, the need to make art has been a driving force in my life. Whether it’s working with and organizing sounds over time, or more recently colors, materials and shapes in space; my work is about turning initially vague, fleeting and amorphous ideas into solid, concrete and comprehensible works of art.  My experiences composing and creating musical structures have informed my work in the visual arts.

My art reflects my responses to the visual stimulation of contemporary life and to the actual materials with which I work.

Elements of both drawing and painting are combined as I work. Each piece maintains the essential fluidity of drawing (with various materials), while utilizing the mass and volume available in painting (with both traditional and non-traditional tools), to capture on canvas or paper the fleeting temporal moments of the energy of life and the art-making experience itself.

Doing abstract work, I don't try to paint what I see. Rather, I try to really see what I paint, and use my initial marks on canvas or paper as the imp...

Visual arts: studies for a number of years at the Art Students League of NY: notably life drawing with Marshall Glasier, drawing and painting with Robert Cenedella and composition, painting and assemblage with Bruce Dorfman.

Musical studies: B. Mus. with honors, University of Conn. Master of Musical Arts in Composition at Yale University SCHOOL OF MUSIC. Fellow in Composition and Conducting at Tanglewood; Resident Fellowships at the Edward MacDowell Colony; Guggenheim fellow in Music Composition; Commission Grants from The Fromm Foundation, The NY State Council on the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and CAPS Foundation.