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Robert Grant is a Fluxus inspired artist working with issues of mortality, whimsy and transcendence. Functioning as an ontological painter, Grant examines the fluidity of pure thought in response to our need for rituals in the ghostly questioning of the spaces we inhabit. Grant has a theatrical background that informs the process of his work with a delicate immediacy that is both roughhewn and ethereal. This includes growing up with his aunt, the ballerina Alice Grant, who danced with Pearl Bailey on Broadway.
Robert Grant is a Fluxus inspired artist working with issues of mortality, whimsy and transcendence. Functioning as an ontological painter, Grant examines the fluidity of pure thought in response to our need for rituals in the ghostly questioning of the spaces we inhabit. Grant has a theatrical background that informs the process of his work with a delicate immediacy that is both roughhewn and ethereal. This includes growing up with his aunt, the ballerina Alice Grant, who danced with Pearl Bailey on Broadway.
As a child, Robert Grant performed on Broadway in the original cast of The Me Nobody Knows as well as the public television production The Electric Company. Subsequently as a young man he earned his MFA from the Tyler School of Art under Scholarship in the Rome Italy study program learning from David Hammons and Enzo Cucchi.
Robert Grant has exhibited throughout New York and internationally, including The world Financial Center, (World Trade Center) PS 122 Gallery, DePaul University Gallery, the Tomb of Augustus in Rome and the Newhouse Centre for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center.
Artist Statement: Given to Goddess, Metaphysical Merchandise
The Goddess Series brings together my involvement with gestural painting and the iconic resonance of the dress image as a sign of the Great Mother. My paintings are a questioning ceremonial process of mourning and celebration. Painting is a way to explore issues of identity and mortality and I have struggled for an image that is expansive yet iconic. I work in layers of time, material and emotion. Down to bare bones- my paintings are about fragility, opulence and the opacity of death. What interests me is the celebration of delicacy and the resultant power and intensity therein.
