Born in Syracuse, New York, Tracy Sugarman is known for his illustrations, which have appeared in "Fortune", "Colliers", "Esquire", "Woman's Home Companion", "American Magazine", "Parents", "Boys Life", and "Gentlemen's Quarterly". He has also done book illustrations for Simon and Schuster, Doubleday, Random House, Scott Foreman, and Hill and Wang. Sugarman is a member of the Society of Illustrators and has been President of the Westport Artists (Connecticut) and of the Westport-Weston Association for the United Nations.

In 1943, he graduated from Syracuse University College of Fine Arts and then served in the Navy where he was an amphibious officer for the D-Day invasion. He began his art career in New York City and studied further with Reuben Tam at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and with David Stone Martin.

Sugarman initiated a personal assignment in 1964 and 1965 of reporting the student voter-registration efforts in Mississippi, and doing an accompanying series of reportorial drawings. He successfully got sponsorship of the project by CBS and the US Information Agency, and his work was then featured in a CBS TV documentary, "How Beautiful on the Mountains". Many of the drawings were used by "The New York Post" and the "Saturday Evening Post" and are now in the permanent archive of the Civil Rights Movement at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. They were often done on-the-spot and sometimes under dangerous circumstances.

In 1969, he worked on Rediscovery Productions, a prize-winning documentary film company focused on the exploration of social and political issues. He also served as a writer and art director for more than thirty documentaries dealing with civil liberties, racism, aging and health, and in recent years has painted murals for hospital pediatric unites. He did a large mural for the AFL/CIO Housing Investment Trust in washington DC, and from 1985, has accepted commissions from several communities to make watercolor folios of historic sites.

Source:
Walt Reed, "The Illustrator in America", 2001