BIOGRAPHY
________________________________________


Freya Grand lives and works in Washington, DC where her urban home and studio are within walking distance of one another in the heart of Dupont Circle.  She is a native of Madison, Wisconsin who received her Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  She then took advanced courses in painting at the University and intaglio and Japanese woodblock printing at the prestigious Haystack Mountain School in Deer Island, Maine.

Grand has been a working artist all of her life.  She lived for three years on the remote Queen Charlotte Islands in Northern British Columbia (now called the Haida Gwaii) in a cabin with no electricity or running water.  This period of Grand's life, living on the land  and existing within the naturally dictated rhythms of each season, laid the foundation for her sense of closeness to the forces of nature and her appreciation for both their beauty and danger.

Now, after years of commitment to exploring vast and remote parts of the earth, all of Freya Grand's experiences come to bear.  She travels and hikes the earth's untouched and sometimes rapidly changing landscapes.  Her constantly growing body of work transports, immerses and emotionally engages the viewer, distilling and enhancing our perceptions of the earth and of ourselves.

Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator of The American University Museum in Washington, DC, says of Grand's work: 

"I have taken strenuous hikes up the sides of mountains on the coast of California, and felt my heart beating in my chest from the exertion.  As I reached each crest there was always a moment when there was nothing but a great, yawning, heart-stopping space before me.  All that physical effort to arrive at a place where I couldn’t belong, between what I knew and the terrifying emptiness of the unknown.

Freya Grand paints this kind of space, where sensuous reality becomes de-materialized through her masterful brushwork, and all that remains are uneasy spirits.  Like the great Romantics, Surrealists, and Symbolists before her, she would have us look beyond mere appearance to find invisible, immutable truths inside ourselves.

We know she has stood, balancing, on this ridge.  We know she reached farther than she should have done.  But as an artist, that is her job."                                                                                 

 

                                                                              

 

 

 

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BIOGRAPHY

 

BIOGRAPHY
________________________________________


Freya Grand lives and works in Washington, DC where her urban home and studio are within walking distance of one another in the heart of Dupont Circle.  She is a native of Madison, Wisconsin who received her Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  She then took advanced courses in painting at the University and intaglio and Japanese woodblock printing at the prestigious Haystack Mountain School in Deer Island, Maine.

Grand has been a working artist all of her life.  She lived for three years on the remote Queen Charlotte Islands in Northern British Columbia (now called the Haida Gwaii) in a cabin with no electricity or running water.  This period of Grand's life, living on the land  and existing within the naturally dictated rhythms of each season, laid the foundation for her sense of closeness to the forces of nature and her appreciation for both their beauty and danger.

Now, after years of commitment to exploring vast and remote parts of the earth, all of Freya Grand's experiences come to bear.  She travels and hikes the earth's untouched and sometimes rapidly changing landscapes.  Her constantly growing body of work transports, immerses and emotionally engages the viewer, distilling and enhancing our perceptions of the earth and of ourselves.

Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator of The American University Museum in Washington, DC, says of Grand's work: 

"I have taken strenuous hikes up the sides of mountains on the coast of California, and felt my heart beating in my chest from the exertion.  As I reached each crest there was always a moment when there was nothing but a great, yawning, heart-stopping space before me.  All that physical effort to arrive at a place where I couldn’t belong, between what I knew and the terrifying emptiness of the unknown.

Freya Grand paints this kind of space, where sensuous reality becomes de-materialized through her masterful brushwork, and all that remains are uneasy spirits.  Like the great Romantics, Surrealists, and Symbolists before her, she would have us look beyond mere appearance to find invisible, immutable truths inside ourselves.

We know she has stood, balancing, on this ridge.  We know she reached farther than she should have done.  But as an artist, that is her job."                                                                                 

 

                                                                              

 

 

 

BLOG SECTIONS