Artist Focus :: Audrey Grant

Edinburgh based artist Audrey trained at Leith School of art in the early 2000s.  She is an award-winning painter, known primarily for her figurative oil paintings. Grant’s practice which includes drawing, photography and installation, is underpinned by intellectual ideas derived from, and inspired by, poetry, literature and philosophy.

“In the Woman series, I mixed and thinned the paint in buckets, using linseed oil and solvent. I placed the canvases on the floor, upside down, with the heads towards me, to try and free myself from my usual easel or wall perspective. Paint was loaded onto brushes and laid or dripped onto the canvas from above, attempting to feel the sensation of the female body as I painted. It represents a development in my figure painting towards a more conceptual approach and an even more physical engagement with techniques and materials.”

“The titles of my paintings The roses of Pieria and The one with violets in her lap are also taken from Sappho’s Fragments, as translated by Carson. Pieria is a mountainous region of northern Greece which was believed to be the birthplace of the Muses. The Muses were crowned with roses and their works-music, dance, poetry, learning and culture-are often symbolised by the flower. These paintings mark a development in my small format Women series. In some ways I also see the small ‘women’ paintings as the Muses and their expressive form alluding to the form of a rose.”