Dan Griggs

Emilia - The Gift

The Black Fan

 Framed Oil on Canvas

 Framed Oil on Canvas

Image Size 44 x 40

Image Size 26 x 22

The Florentine

Sunflowers, Plums & Pollen

 Framed Oil on Canvas

 Framed Oil on Canvas

Image Size 20 x 22

Image Size 22 x 17

The Vigil

Triste

 Framed Oil on Canvas

 Framed Oil on Canvas

Image Size 30 x 34

Image Size 20 x 16

Steeped in history and served piping hot, new paintings by Dan Griggs offer the visitor depth of content and skillful execution.

So begins the review of a gallery show that Wesley Pulkka wrote for The Albuquerque Journal in 1997. Dan Griggs has since gone on to have his work displayed in many other galleries and venues, not the least of which is the wine label for Casa Rondeña’s award-winning Cabernet Franc, of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mr. Pulkka’s review continues:

“To uncover the roots of many young contemporary artists one needs only to thumb through back issues of a few New York art magazines. But works by Griggs require foraging in the old growth forests of the European masters.

“Griggs uses the Flemish painting medium developed by Jacques Maroger (1884-1962). Maroger was an academically trained artist who worked as a chemist at the Louvre in Paris.

“In 1939 he came to America and settled in Baltimore where he published Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Masters in 1948. The book unveiled the chemistry and methods used by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and others in the Flemish school.

“Griggs is among hundreds of artists still using the medium. However he has resisted Rubens’ baroque compositional extravagance and Maroger’s constraining academic chains. He has long been fascinated with stained glass windows and veiled women. His leaded windows, use of light, and compositional concepts come straight from works by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75), and his veiled faces are plucked from sculpture by Medardo Rosso (1858-1928). Though both historical references constitute the smoking brush of Griggs’ appropriations, they do nothing to explain away his unique personal vision.

“Dan is a talented draftsman who is equally influenced by modernist geometric abstraction and the eccentric drama of the photographic snap shot. He is also a symbolist who tells strange Gothic tales that hover on the liminal edge of horror. Violence is somewhere out there just beyond the picture plane. His images live in the eye of the vortex.

“In silent rooms his veiled sensuous figures, with eyes covered or closed, become blind oracles about to speak, through slightly parted lips, of things to come as the millennium draws to a thundering close.”

BORN
1948 Las Cruces, New Mexico

EDUCATION
1974 B.A. Corporate Finance; University of Missouri, Colombia, MO
1978-80 Independent Studies with Siegfried Hahn and Howard Wexler, Albuquerque, NM

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2006 new work, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2004 new work, Denise Roberge Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
2003 new work, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2000 Through a Glass, Darkly, new work, van de Griff Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
1997 J. Cacciola Galleries, New York, NY

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2006 13th Annual Realism Invitational, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Gallery Artists Portfolio, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2005 12th Annual Realism Invitational, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Gallery Artists Portfolio, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
69th Annual National Juried Group Show, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown,
OH; Award winner
2004 68th Annual National Juried Group Show, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown,
OH; Award winner
11th Annual Realism Invitational, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2003 10th Annual Realism Invitational, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Papier: drawings and work on paper, van de Griff Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2003 Gallery Group Show, J. Cacciola Galleries, New York, NY
2002 9th Annual Realism Invitational, van de Griff Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2002 Gallery Group Show, J. Cacciola Galleries, New York, NY
2001 Beyond the Millennium, Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science, Evansville, IN
8th Annual Realism Invitational, van de Griff Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2000 7th Annual Realism Invitational, van de Griff Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
New Work, Dartmouth Street Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
2000 Go Figure, Figurative Group Exhibition, J. Cacciola Galleries, New York, NY
2001 Gallery Group Show, J. Cacciola Galleries, New York, NY
1999 Susan Contreras and Dan Griggs: New Work, J. Cacciola Galleries, New York, NY
Liberation: A Celebration of the Nude, van de Griff Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
6th Annual Realism Invitational: Realism Knows No Bounds, van de Griff Gallery,
Santa Fe, NM
1997 U.S. Artists ’97, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA
1996 Invitational, Marsha Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA
1995 Invitational, Dartmouth Street Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
1994 Realism ’94, Fletcher Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Group Show, Gallery Dorog, Beverly Hills, CA
1992 Magnifico, Juried Exhibition, Albuquerque, NM
Invitational Show, Concetta D Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
1988 Group Exhibition, American Library, Rabat, Morocco
1987 Jacques Maroger and Circle Exhibition, Red River Valley Museum, Vernon, TX

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
The New Mexico Magazine, "Painted Violins", September 2006
Albuquerque The Magazine, "Artist Dan Griggs and model Summer Fry strive for the perfect portrait", June 2006
American Art Collector, Exhibition Preview, "Santa Fe Show offers two different takes on Contemporary figurative work, June 2006
Art in America, Exhibition Preview, 2006
The Albuquerque Journal, Exhibition Preview, 2006
The Albuquerque Tribune, “Two Man Show”, 1997
The Villager, New York, 1997
Albuquerque Journal, “Virtual Realism”, 1995
Albuquerque Journal, “Arts”, 1994
The Albuquerque Tribune, “Art of Old Masters Live On”, February 1982