Verdant landscapes, market scenes and mysterious figures with inquisitive eyes all meet the same fate under James Griffin’s brush, frozen in time with their stories and secrets laid bare in explosive color. Playful, poignant and at times fantastical, they read as a history of one artist’s ever-present sense of wonder in a world where mundanity lies in the eye of the beholder. It comes as no surprise as I stroll up to Griffin’s home-studio one morning in the neighborhoods flanking the Ringling Museum and find the man already at the easel, sunlight and birdsong streaming through the open windows, working on a series of increasingly abstract paintings based on a single photograph of a wilting bouquet. The house is in mid-renovation and the furniture’s wrapped in plastic, but the studio is clear, the bathroom functions and the coffeemaker works.

Photo By Evan Sigmund

PHOTO BY EVAN SIGMUND

“I love painting,” says Griffin with a broad smile. He compares the art to meditation. “There’s so much negativity, and people can spend their whole lives looking at negative things, but I see the sunlight and you put the music on and I’m transported.” With the first in the series complete and standing to the side, Griffin is just beginning on the second. His process reveals an intriguing dichotomy and seemingly contradictory reliance on precision and chaos.

At the easel, Griffin works with an exuberance bordering on madness. He stands and claims the canvas with great sweeps of his brush, throwing his body into the effort as the spirit moves him. A small stereo in the back pumps out Beethoven, Brahms and Afro-pop, as Griffin dances and paints and the distinction between the two becomes unclear. Working primarily with oils, he employs what he calls the “Messy Brush Technique,” which enables him to paint quickly and spontaneously, without time for uncertainty or second-guessing. By mixing colors with his brush as he paints instead of pausing to mix and switching brushes, Griffin cannot completely control how the colors will mix or even when a hidden red or blue from his bristles may come forth, but he can adapt and create. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “One must still have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star,” and from Griffin’s chaos energy is bestowed upon the canvas. “People have said that’s not the way you’re supposed to do it,” says Griffin. “Well, it works for me.”

But before the music starts and the madness begins, Griffin’s process is less Dionysian play and more Apollonian rigor. Underpinning the irrepressible energy of his painting lies a carefully constructed scaffolding to guide the brush. Usually beginning with one of his photographs, Griffin will finalize the composition on his computer before superimposing a grid over the image and blowing it up to the size of his canvas. With an identical grid on his canvas, Griffin can more accurately judge the proportions of his early sketches. It’s an ancient technique to assist in realism, but far from constraining. He finds the grid simultaneously serves to free his vision. “It makes you think abstractly,” says Griffin. “Instead of looking at the whole thing, you’re just looking at where lines intersect, and eventually you’re just looking at shapes.”

Beginning from his yellow ochre-toned, gridded canvas, he sketches the basic outline of his piece with more yellow ochre, finding shapes and adding bits of texture, but moving quickly. With the grid set, there’s no need or desire for preliminary pencil sketching. “A brush is more expressive,” says Griffin, lost in the feel and weight of the brush in his hand. He sweeps the brush through the air, before giving a grin. Targeting the darkest areas of the scene, bringing them forward and filling them in, the painting starts to gain weight. I ask him what the proper way to hold the brush would be. “Any way that feels right.”

Despite his apparent easygoing attitude towards his creation, Griffin’s artistry seems to thrive in the midst of opposing forces, evidenced not only in his process, but also in the final compositions, which often straddle the line between realism and abstract. Landscapes and subjects are always identifiable, but each canvas has the “Griffin Touch,” that touch of the abstract, often in the form of near-hidden geometric patterns and shapes emerging from the construct, such as a hexagonal grid peeking from the forest depths of one, lending an air of the techno-fantastical to an otherwise pleasant scene. Others are more overt, like “Flamingo Waltz,” which places the stilted subjects against a backdrop so abstracted they appear to be standing in music. The battle between realism and abstract is one that Griffin has taken part in his entire artistic career, and one he continues to explore today with his latest series. “I’m trying to get at the other stuff that’s part of our reality,” says Griffin. Like the bouquet of wilting roses, the subject has the power to communicate more than itself. Griffin feels art was meant to explore. “What else can I do to trigger those thoughts? Lately I’ve been more conscientious about trying to say what it is that I’m after, what I’m trying to do.” Still, Griffin seems careful not to take too much control. Evaluating his finished composition, the “Messy Brush Technique” leaves his palette looking like the remains of a box of crayons left in the sun, but the bouquet stands clear as day in a vibrant color that puts Dorothy’s shoes to shame and Griffin expresses a certain amount of surprise. “I was splashing away,” he says almost accusingly. “It just came out that way.”