The few paintings I own by Joan Griswold invite me into other rooms, other spaces than the ones where they hang in my home. Griswold’s paintings evoke place and settings that are intimate and rich with light and color, yet never overly-done or sentimental. While the scenes she paints are exteriors of buildings and interiors—kitchens and libraries, chairs around a table, an unmade bed—her focus is always on the abstract composition, the play of light.
Early in her career, Griswold painted her subjects of street scenes and interiors because of her interest in architectural form and how it could guide the way she used light and shadow. Joan’s father’s job brought her family to Japan when she was a teenager. She says that being exposed to Japanese art and architecture had a big influence on her work. She was fascinated by the highly geometrical, subtly colored designs, “the beauty and sense of line” found in Japanese homes. She is still concerned with those elements as well as “the Western emphasis on realistic light.” And while her paintings are narrative in subject, they do not tell the whole story. Griswold has said, “You—the viewer—can finish the story yourself. There’s more of a dialogue between the artist and the viewer.”
Griswold grew up in Rochester, New York, and after her high school years in Japan, attended Beloit College in Wisconsin. At Beloit, she started out as a theater major and ended up as a studio art and classics major. After college, she moved to New York where she managed a frame shop. She moved to Sheffield, Massachusetts in 1986 in the beautiful Berkshires, an area that has long drawn creative people from all walks of life. There she rented a studio on Railroad Street in nearby Great Barrington where she both paints and teaches painting classes.
For many years, Griswold exhibited her work in one-woman shows at the Hoorn-Ashby Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York. Gallery owner Marie-Claire Barton closed her New York gallery several years ago. Barton has called Griswold one of her “more important artists.”
In a profile of Joan Griswold several years ago published in Berkshire Living Magazine, Sheryl Lechner wrote, “In one canvas, The Unmade Bed, bright sunlight falls across the imprint left by a head on a down pillow. A simple white sheet is haphazardly thrown back over the cobalt blue comforter, but the interplay of light and shadow across the two fabrics allows for a whole range of colors beyond the flat blue and white of the actual colors. The painted bed is a multi-hued affair, ranges from the palest yellows and lavenders to deep grays and violets. Griswold points out how her work has progressed from tightly controlled, careful brushwork, toward more experimentation with loose brushwork and broader, swirling surfaces that let the viewer, ‘see the idea of the brush stroke. ‘”
Griswold lives in Mill River, Massachusetts with her husband, writer and humorist, Roy Blount, Jr. Recently, they have been spending more time in New Orleans, where they have visited often over the past fourteen years. ”New Orleans has opened my work,” Griswold says. “I love the sultriness, the warmth, the laid-back people are happy and open.” She adds, “I have been studying how we are all connected, and I feel that sense of connection more intensely in New Orleans.”
Joan Griswold’s award-winning work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions, and has been acclaimed in the New York Times and other publications.  Her work can be found in many private collections throughout the US and Europe. She has had several shows in New Orleans recently. One exhibit explored the theme of books at the Cole-Pratt Gallery on Magazine Street . She exhibits her work every summer at the South Wharf Gallery in Nantucket.u

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