John Grazier


John Grazier is an American realist painter, working with India ink airbrush, pencil and oil paint. He is an American artist of the late-20th century known for his meticulous cross-hatching technique, skewed perspective, and a "dreamlike" representation of seemingly ordinary subjects, such as buses, coffee cups, office buildings, Victorian-style porches, and phone booths.

Early life

John Grazier was born in Long Beach, New York in 1946. His mother, Josephine Stine Grazier, attended Wellesley College and received an advanced degree at Harvard Graduate School. His father, back from World War II, owned the Bellevue Inn, a hotel in Delaware Water Gap, PA. He was only two when his father was diagnosed with cancer, went bankrupt and died. Several of his paintings were based on his lingering childhood memories of his father's hotel. In 1968 he went to study at the Corcoran School of Art, and in 1971-72 he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art for a year on a full scholarship. He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He also won first place in the 1975 Davidson National Print and Drawing Competition.

Methods

John Grazier started drawing images of coffee cups, buses, diners, tunnels and bridges at the beginning of his career in 1973.
As the Washington Post art critic Jo Ann Lewis wrote of John Grazier's technique and subject matter :
“…Silent, unpeopled interiors with empty coffee cups, overlooking a parking lot full of buses… He starts with an overall design in his head, draws in the basic lines with a ruler and then fills in the images with free-hand cross-hatching that retains the integrity of each line...”
During the 1990s, his subject matter evolved further, focusing on facades of Victorian architecture buildings, railed porches and balconies, windows, elaborate moldings, phones and drawing persons.
In 2001, Grazier started working in color using oil paints.

Public Collections

His works, “House on a Hill in a Dream” and “Memory of a Porch”, are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Another pencil drawing “End of the Line” is in the Art Institute of Chicago. “Breaking Up” and “Memory of a Porch are in the National Gallery of Art.
The drawing “Passing Windows in Fall” is included in the Hechinger Collection “Tools as Art.” His works are also included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, DC, and the Arkansas Arts Center. Two of his works, "Untitled" and "Rattling Windows", are included in the Pollock-Krasner Foundation image collection.
His works are also included in the following university collections: “City Lines” Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Davidson College, Dartmouth College, University of Rochester, and Wellesley College.
His work has been purchased by many law firms and corporations. His work are also in the private collections of Jim Lehrer, Truland Systems, Nixon Peabody, Hogan & Hartson, Owens Corning Corporation, Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen family.

One-Man Shows

In 1974, he had his first one-man show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, in Washington, DC Davidson College and the Lunn Gallery in Washington, DC,.
In September–October 1991, John Grazier had a one-man show named “A Ticket to...”at the Washington, DC’s Zenith Gallery. Featured pieces included large airbrush India ink paintings on paper: “Echoes: Coaches Idling”, “Junk Yard Dogs”, “You Can’t Go Home Again”, “The Children Who Would Gallop”, “House on a Hill in a Dream."

Greyhound Bus Terminal Project in Washington, DC

In a summer of 1990, Grazier had signed a $125,000 contract with the Canadian developer Manulife Real Estate to produce 18 black-and-white airbrush paintings for the Greyhound Bus Terminal lobby in Washington, D.C.. The restoration of the terminal was part of an agreement with Manulife and area preservationists to keep the 1930s Art Deco building by architect William S. Arrasmith at 1100 New York Ave., N.W. intact as a lobby-entrance to a 12-story office building going up behind it. Upon its reopening in 1991, the building's lobby featured enlarged photographs of the original 18 paintings featuring buses, coffee cups, lonely cityscapes and Mount Rushmore reflected in a bus windshield.

Exhibitions

He has been included in many gallery exhibitions, including the Davidson National Print and Drawing Competition, Middendorf/Lane Gallery, Foundry Gallery, Corcoran Gallery of Art, a United States Information Agency Tour of the Middle East, The Mint Museum, Washington Project for the Arts Exhibition. His urban landscape “Memory of a Trombone” has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. His works have also been exhibited at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Tampa Museum of Art, the Farragut West branch of Citibank in Washington, DC.
In 1990, John Grazier was one of only two living artists represented in a show at DC's Adams-Davidson Gallery featuring “200 years of American Master Drawings.”
He currently lives and works in Shamokin, Pennsylvania.

Selected works

TitleMediumDateCollectionDimensionsImageReference
House on a Hill in a DreamPencil on paper1974Smithsonian American Art Museum16 x 28 1/2 in.
Memory of a PorchLithograph1976Smithsonian American Art Museum22 x 30 in.
Memory of a PorchLithograph1975National Gallery of Art22 1/8 x 29 15/16 in.
Breaking UpLithograph1976National Gallery of Art22 1/8 x 30 1/16 in.
End of the LineGraphite with touches of erasing on paper1980Art Institute of Chicago26 3/4 x 36 2/3 in.
UntitledIndia ink on paper1985The Pollock-Krasner Foundation40 x 60 in.
Rattling WindowsPencil on paper1980The Pollock-Krasner Foundation30 x 40 in.
Cop Motors at RestAquatint EtchingNational Law Enforcement Museum
Passing Windows in FallGraphite on paper1983The Hechinger Collection28 x 38 in.
City LinesGraphite on paper1978Rose Art Museum8 x 23 in.
Reflections of Mount RushmoreIndia ink airbrush, photographs1991Lobby of 1100 New York Avenue NW Washington, DC
Rebecca's Doll HouseOil on canvasTruland Systems
Burning BushOil on canvasTruland Systems30 x 40 in.
The VisitorOil on canvas2001Hogan Lovells, formerly known as Hogan & Hartson