For this series of mixed-media drawings on heavy watercolour paper, Brian Grison has developed a project that is a commentary on the mental life of the student, with himself as the artist/student model.
Date/Time: Apr 25 2017, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Burnaby, Bob Prittie Library (Metrotown)
The appropriated image of a boy making a drawing is a stand-in for Grison, as well as the typical student, who is engaged in a practice similar to the process of making art.
The apparently random composition and deep layering of images is meant to create distractions from the drawing boy. It is also meant to represent the mental processes that interfere with the student/artist’s ability to concentrate.
Grison’s work can be seen at both Bob Prittie Library and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.
About the Artist:
Brian Grison was born in Toronto in 1947. After graduating from the five-year program of the Art Department of Central Technical High School (CTS) in Toronto, he lived in Mexico for about two years. Later he completed Honours Bachelor’s degrees in Fine Art (Drawing and Painting) and in Art History from the University of Victoria, and a Master’s degree in the History of Art at Carleton University, Ottawa.
Beginning in 1970, he was a part-time instructor at CTS for eight years. He was a sessional instructor at York University in 1975, Camosun College in Victoria in the early 1980s and the University of Alberta in 2004. As well as teaching part-time at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design from 1978 to 1987 and the Art Gallery of Ontario from 1988 to 1992, he taught drawing part-time at the University of Victoria since about 1977 to 2011, as well as for art schools in Victoria, Toronto and Ottawa.
Between 1975 and 1992, he received ten artist's grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council. Since 1970, he has mounted solo exhibitions in public, artist-run and commercial galleries in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. His work has been in group exhibitions in New York, Paris and Belgrade as well as Ontario and British Columbia. Public galleries in Ontario and British Columbia have collected his work.
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