WELCOME TO TRACIE'S WORLD

You could say that art runs in Tracie Bobo’s genes. Her mother, an accomplished artist, infused her with a love of art. Tracie in turn has passed that love on to her daughter who, although still a teenager, has already set her sights on becoming a professional artist and is rapidly working her way toward mastery of acrylic painting. But what about Tracie? Despite being surrounded by artistic inspiration and creative influences throughout her life, she’s taken quite a few years and lots of exploration into other art forms—drawing, glass etching, glass mosaics, and more—to discover her true calling: finger painting! “I tried just about everything else but none of them became my passion,” she notes. “My heart wanted to find something uniquely my own, something just as powerful but different from what my mom and daughter have.”

Tracie’s journey into finger painting began while searching the Internet, where she discovered the paintings of noted finger painter and Seattle-based artist Kimberly Adams. “I was immediately drawn to the color and thick texture of the paint,” she recalls. “To say I loved her work is an understatement!” Tracie took a finger painting workshop with Adams and hasn’t stopped exploring this new technique since. She is enormously grateful to Adams, her teacher, mentor, and friend, who has graciously encouraged her to pursue her artistic joy.

With finger painting, Tracie explains, the paint goes directly from the tube onto the canvas. There is no mixing of color beforehand—it is all done on the canvas—so the paint must be very amenable to being swirled and layered together. While some artists might be intimidated by this kind of immediacy, Tracie has embraced the speed with which she can create. It’s a way of painting that she finds vastly satisfying, perfectly natural, and even intuitive, because she feels the paintings guide her into doing exactly what needs to be done. “Finger painting just clicks with me,” she adds. “To sum it up, it just makes me incredibly happy!”

A native Texan, Tracie has also called California and Vermont home, but she always returns to Texas. A graduate of Texas A&M University, she currently lives in Fort Worth with her husband, two children, and their three rescue German Shepherds. When she’s not painting or running the back office of her husband’s law firm, Tracie enjoys cooking, baking, organic gardening, and even canning vegetables. She jokes that she was born in the wrong era, and dreams of living on a farm… no doubt one with a big art studio!