I often look at artworks, and can pretty quickly tell how they're made. It's one of the great joys of being a painter. It's illuminating and fulfilling to walk through museums and know what great artists years ago, or in far flung places were up to. But, I find, some of my favorite artworks are ones I can't quite figure out.
This is why I love Alex Griffin's paintings. They're somewhat elusive. You can look closely, or again and again, and still be a little stumped about how he puts them together. They're deep. They're affectionate. They're puzzling. And they're lovely.
Alex has a solo show at Nancy Margolis Gallery, up until February 17th. Here’s the blurb from their website:
“In his second solo exhibition with Nancy Margolis Gallery, Philadelphia artist Alex Griffin conjures impressions of distant memories and dreamstates. Quiet figures hover weightlessly within gauzy landscapes that oscillate between solid and transparent areas of paint. The times of day are intentionally ambiguous, but recall in-between states, similar to twilight or the dim glow of midwinter. Heightening the aura of mystery, Griffin evokes timelessness by concealing the narratives’ physical locations and precise moments in history.”
You can see the paintings in a first-rate viewing room on the gallery site. There are images, info, and some nice detail shots of the paintings’ surfaces. These surfaces, the small and subtle details and textures are some of the most charming bits of Griffin’s painting.
He lays his paint with variation. In areas the pigment is thin and scrubbed. Other areas have thick luscious dollops of paint. There are candid scratches and scribbles throughout. Small features, figures, shrubs, moons, birds etc. doodled into the paint before it dried. All laid in with ruthless intimacy.
Each scene feels like something you remember, but are also seeing for the first time. Griffin abstracts scenes in ways that make you feel like you’re seeing multiple things at once. They’re kind of like storybook pictures. Deep spaces are foreshortened, and feel no deeper than the picture plane. He presents perspective with guilelessness. In a good way, the pictures feel childlike. Honest and natural they seem composed by intuition. Objects and figures float. Birds may fly around at the bottom of a picture. Things like windows, ladders, fences or chairs may wander into the picture wherever your eye happens to meander.
Hazy with patches of blue and brown Midwinter is both joyful and quiet. It feels like short winter days when dusk comes just at the end of afternoon and buildings quickly change from structures to silhouettes. Daubs of white paint polka dot the sky. The orbs of white light flutter in the tree branches over a little winter village. Memories of winter, maybe Christmas, from childhood or a dream. Scenes that float around in the back of your vision, very familiar but ungrounded from a comprehensive report.
Agatha’s Dream is a play set. It's among a few scenes in this show portraying theaters or stages. Agatha’s Dream has a figure in a pink dress and a house, some trees, and stars in the sky. The dream emerges through sleep’s gauzy veil like a scene from behind a theater curtain. It starts somewhat devoid of context, but you're drawn precisely because there are more questions than answers.
If Agatha’s Dream is a simple mystery, maybe Agatha Christie, than A Gathering is David Lynch. A Gathering is also set in a theater-like structure. A square of black, specked with stars, borders three sides of the composition and frames the scene. A Gathering is not as homey as Midwinter or Agatha's Dream. A pointy animal faced figure looms above another vague animal shape, maybe a wolf. A man and women hold hands beneath a gothic looking window. It’s all fenced in behind a small row of shrubs, and under a clouded night sky.
Afterglow is a landscape that vibrates with purple and pink. There are twos in this picture. Two tall green trees. Two flying white birds. A stately building stands mid picture with a glowing white circle, a clock tower. It's countered by a round moon in the sky to the upper right. A ghostly plume of smoke rises from a chimney, while a ghostly blear that seems ground into the painting’s surface emanates from the building’s roof.
There are also some paintings on cigar boxes in this show. These are a treat. The best expressionistic paintings are undergirded by a kind of urgency of passion. I feel it in these. They’re not necessarily fast paintings. Rather they’re paintings of outpouring. Heartfelt outpouring. They’re blind to pretense. The expression is foremost, and the highbrow comes later. It’s an accomplishment to be appreciated. Sometimes found object pieces and colloquial motifs can feel a bit ingenuine. Not the case with these cigar box paintings. They feel wholeheartedly unfeigned, and they’re materially lovely.
Interestingly the earnest childlike charm of Alex’s paintings turns grandfatherly on the cigar boxes. Like, maybe, a great grandfather who tools away putting together tenderhearted little objects: these seem like pictures humans have been painting forever. Wonderfully humble. He quietly glimpses his love. She’s briefly silhouetted by winter's light, and he is struck by her beauty. He scratches it down with whatever things are at hand. Or he sees some foxes on a snowy ridge, and does the same. There's a sense these kinds of things, heartfelt artfully made objects, are simply timeless. Someone will always be there, seeing things and putting notions down in paint. Making art out of sentiment and intuition. Unassuming. And for this we can be thankful.
This is why I love Alex Griffin's paintings. They're somewhat elusive. You can look closely, or again and again, and still be a little stumped about how he puts them together. They're deep. They're affectionate. They're puzzling. And they're lovely.
Alex has a solo show at Nancy Margolis Gallery, up until February 17th. Here’s the blurb from their website:
“In his second solo exhibition with Nancy Margolis Gallery, Philadelphia artist Alex Griffin conjures impressions of distant memories and dreamstates. Quiet figures hover weightlessly within gauzy landscapes that oscillate between solid and transparent areas of paint. The times of day are intentionally ambiguous, but recall in-between states, similar to twilight or the dim glow of midwinter. Heightening the aura of mystery, Griffin evokes timelessness by concealing the narratives’ physical locations and precise moments in history.”
You can see the paintings in a first-rate viewing room on the gallery site. There are images, info, and some nice detail shots of the paintings’ surfaces. These surfaces, the small and subtle details and textures are some of the most charming bits of Griffin’s painting.
He lays his paint with variation. In areas the pigment is thin and scrubbed. Other areas have thick luscious dollops of paint. There are candid scratches and scribbles throughout. Small features, figures, shrubs, moons, birds etc. doodled into the paint before it dried. All laid in with ruthless intimacy.
Each scene feels like something you remember, but are also seeing for the first time. Griffin abstracts scenes in ways that make you feel like you’re seeing multiple things at once. They’re kind of like storybook pictures. Deep spaces are foreshortened, and feel no deeper than the picture plane. He presents perspective with guilelessness. In a good way, the pictures feel childlike. Honest and natural they seem composed by intuition. Objects and figures float. Birds may fly around at the bottom of a picture. Things like windows, ladders, fences or chairs may wander into the picture wherever your eye happens to meander.
Hazy with patches of blue and brown Midwinter is both joyful and quiet. It feels like short winter days when dusk comes just at the end of afternoon and buildings quickly change from structures to silhouettes. Daubs of white paint polka dot the sky. The orbs of white light flutter in the tree branches over a little winter village. Memories of winter, maybe Christmas, from childhood or a dream. Scenes that float around in the back of your vision, very familiar but ungrounded from a comprehensive report.
Agatha’s Dream is a play set. It's among a few scenes in this show portraying theaters or stages. Agatha’s Dream has a figure in a pink dress and a house, some trees, and stars in the sky. The dream emerges through sleep’s gauzy veil like a scene from behind a theater curtain. It starts somewhat devoid of context, but you're drawn precisely because there are more questions than answers.
If Agatha’s Dream is a simple mystery, maybe Agatha Christie, than A Gathering is David Lynch. A Gathering is also set in a theater-like structure. A square of black, specked with stars, borders three sides of the composition and frames the scene. A Gathering is not as homey as Midwinter or Agatha's Dream. A pointy animal faced figure looms above another vague animal shape, maybe a wolf. A man and women hold hands beneath a gothic looking window. It’s all fenced in behind a small row of shrubs, and under a clouded night sky.
Afterglow is a landscape that vibrates with purple and pink. There are twos in this picture. Two tall green trees. Two flying white birds. A stately building stands mid picture with a glowing white circle, a clock tower. It's countered by a round moon in the sky to the upper right. A ghostly plume of smoke rises from a chimney, while a ghostly blear that seems ground into the painting’s surface emanates from the building’s roof.
There are also some paintings on cigar boxes in this show. These are a treat. The best expressionistic paintings are undergirded by a kind of urgency of passion. I feel it in these. They’re not necessarily fast paintings. Rather they’re paintings of outpouring. Heartfelt outpouring. They’re blind to pretense. The expression is foremost, and the highbrow comes later. It’s an accomplishment to be appreciated. Sometimes found object pieces and colloquial motifs can feel a bit ingenuine. Not the case with these cigar box paintings. They feel wholeheartedly unfeigned, and they’re materially lovely.
Interestingly the earnest childlike charm of Alex’s paintings turns grandfatherly on the cigar boxes. Like, maybe, a great grandfather who tools away putting together tenderhearted little objects: these seem like pictures humans have been painting forever. Wonderfully humble. He quietly glimpses his love. She’s briefly silhouetted by winter's light, and he is struck by her beauty. He scratches it down with whatever things are at hand. Or he sees some foxes on a snowy ridge, and does the same. There's a sense these kinds of things, heartfelt artfully made objects, are simply timeless. Someone will always be there, seeing things and putting notions down in paint. Making art out of sentiment and intuition. Unassuming. And for this we can be thankful.
