Claire Grill

Region: Northeast

"Because of the passage of time, nothing in life is static. Not even mountains. But through the act of representation we witness " the moment" tethered to "the eternal". We create environments in which the ephemeral can remain. We write diaries, snap photos, record videos, draw what we see and imagine, tell others our dreams, all in an attempt to suspend time, to remember, to fix life in a space we can understand and return to. But every time we represent a thing, that thing is ripped from actuality and suspended in the space of representation; the memory is transformed and defined by the parameters of its re-telling. My work contemplates the structures we use to seize the ephemeral, to bind the momentary to the eternal, and to protect and entrap in pictorial space all we wish would remain.

The tent form in each of these paintings serves as scaffolding to support, contain, and trap material and color in the representational space of painting. It provides a stage for paint as material, as color, and as a record of an action fixed in a flat space."

Clare Grill was born and raised outside of Chicago, IL. In 2005, she earned her M.F.A. degree from Pratt Institute. She currently lives and works in Queens, NY.