DIANE ROSENSTEIN is pleased to announce Clare Grill: Mary Mary, a solo exhibition of new paintings and drawings by the New York-based artist. Clare Grill: Mary Mary opens Saturday, October 18th, with a reception for the artist from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm.  This is Grill’s first exhibition with the gallery. 

Grill, who was born in Chicago, will present abstract paintings as well as drawings she calls “Samplers”. Grill paints with oils on linen, including the inconsistent texture as a rich compositional element of her rigorous but unexpected abstractions. Often painting on an intimate scale, she employs color, surface, and form in an exploratory venture, seeking a “felt sense” of content over explicitly recognizable images. Her motifs originate in women’s history and antique samplers—small, embroidered pieces of fabric made by young girls to display their proficiency in needlepoint—yet her paintings are dynamic reappraisals of contemporary abstraction

The title of the exhibition – Mary Mary – refers to the handing down of tradition via a name. Both the artist’s sister and their maternal grandmother share the name Mary. The title also references a familiar nursery rhyme, repeated by generations. Similarly, Grill’s paintings are interpretations and iterations of what came before: tiny marks, strange, drawn shapes, faded color, and worn, worked surfaces. Grill’s practice thus investigates domestic training, as well as the generational relationships between women, their families, their homes, and their environments. 

In her artist’s statement, Grill writes: “I make paintings about things fading away…I’ve become less concerned with image really and more with just painting.” Recently, she has been included in conversations about “The New Casualists” – a movement in contemporary abstract painting (coined by artist and writer Sharon Butler in 2011) -- but resists that label. Though she has a tendency to “flirt with the edge” and looks for unexpected outcomes, Clare Grill offers openness, not accident.

Clare Grill: Mary Mary will be on view through November 29, 2014

Clare Grill (USA, 1979) received her BA from the University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, MN (2001), an MFA from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY (2005), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2011). Miss Grill’s paintings were recently included in This One’s Optimistic: Pincushion (curated by Cary Smith), New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT (2014), and other institutions including: Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, Lancaster, PA (2014); New Art Center, Newton, MA (2012); and The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY (2009). Grill has had solo exhibitions at Fred.Giampietro Gallery, New Haven, CT (2014); Soloway, Brooklyn, NY (2014); Reserve Ames, Los Angeles, CA (2013); and Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, NY (2011. Important group shows include: Brooklyn Bridge (curated by Justine Frischmann), George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2014); and Primary (curated by Jamillah James), Nudashank Gallery, Baltimore, MD (2012). Clare Grill lives and works in New York City.