Robert Tracy

Born in 1948, I started drawing at age 5. I had a No. 2 pencil and a pad of ordinary writing paper. I’d draw the Japanese Elms in our front yard, my dad’s car out front and the corn field across the street. Grass, sidewalk and street etc. The piano keys inside...This was in Lafayette, Indiana where I still live with my wife of 50 years. Our first daughter (1969) lives in Lafayette, while our second daughter (1972) will move back soon.

I studied at Purdue University here in my home town. From 1972 until 1979 - - I attended off and on, sometimes full time, others part. Most disappointing to me were my art classes where my own professors could not, or would not, draw as well as I did. Some semesters I'd get A's; others I'd get an F, or an incomplete. I was learning nothing from those classes that were pushing modern art like "abstract expressionism", and ridiculing or ignoring the great art. I wanted to study anatomy. My professor told me "that's not fashionable". So in 1979 I went my own way and studied the masters in my own way, got a human skeleton and studied books on anatomy. In 1990 I went back to Purdue for a semester. I was awarded departmental credit for four courses (two in painting, two in life drawing). So I never had to suffer through those. And it brought me to within one semester of graduation.

I've kept pretty much private about my art. But I did have a one-man show of my art in 1990. I was the first to have an exhibit with the county's Tippecanoe Art's Federation. It was held in the old county library for one month.