The love and pursuit of art can be attributed to Trace’s genes. His late grandmother, Virginia Tillou, was a well-known colorist whose paintings are in private and corporate collections, and she exhibited at the Albright/Knox Museum. Trace’s father Peter Tillou, the distinguished international fine arts dealer of Litchfield, Connecticut and London included Trace in many of his travels in search of art, artists and museums all over the world. The Tillou family has been involved with the arts since the eighteenth century.  

Trace has studied the application and design of painting in acrylic, oil, and watercolor for over 30 years. He has studied and analysed the arts in museums and private collections in many countries including England, France, Holland, China, and Australia. He started making ceramics at Rumsey Hall “private school” and continued there for nine years. Trace then studied at Suffield Academy for three years where he attended various painting courses. He also spent three years at Lynchburg College where he began to create his own styles and painted large abstract murals in homes. After having interned at Sothebys in the Old Masters Department, Trace worked in the Eighteenth to Twentieth Century Paintings Department at Sloan’s Auction House in Washington D.C. Trace also worked in his father’s gallery in Connecticut doing the antique and fine art circuit for a few years.  

Following his work with his father, Trace moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he opened his own gallery. In the two years he spent in Santa Fe, he had two one-man shows and was copyrighted and published four times by Stefen George Originals Inc.  

After twenty-five years of visiting Sanibel where his parents owned property and often vacationed, Trace decided to move to the island in 1994. Feeling drawn to the wildlife and jungle atmosphere of Sanibel, he bought a house on the island to use as a studio and gallery. Trace has lived and shown his paintings on Sanibel for the last 25 years. His one-man exhibitions have been in Naples, FL., Sanibel Island, FL., Litchfield, CT., Stonington, CT., Santa Fe, NM., Captiva Island, FL., and Los Angeles, CA.  

The paintings being exhibited on this website are all originals and is a retrospective of his work for the last 27 years, with a wonderful sensitivity to color and depth, a marvelous combination of color, design and narrative elements. Many of Trace’s abstract paintings have motifs relative to wildlife and human form and much to do with abstract expressionism focusing on colorism and the effects color has on the viewer. Many of these paintings have been sold and are now in collections around the world. Trace does commissions of paintings on request. Trace in 2020, will be exhibiting his work in at least 3 different places on Sanibel Island this coming season. Feel free to contact for more information.