A painting with a pale background beneath calligraphic lines and shapes

Rives Granade

Scarlet Grey, 2023

Graphite, dyed gesso, wax crayon, colored pencil, collaged canvas pieces, and oil on canvas
72 x 60 in
182.9 x 152.4 cm

Rives Granade’s Scarlet Grey is structured from a series of neural synapses. Often referencing the drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal – a pioneering Spanish neuroanatomist who created groundbreaking drawings of the human brain, Scarlet Grey also includes depictions of a jaw. Jaws emerge across many of Granade’s paintings, alluding to what he describes as “abstraction eating itself in entropic carnage.” Granade’s grandmother’s house is in the center of the painting when hung in landscape orientation; hung in portrait style it becomes figurative. The title “Scarlet Grey” refers to the grey matter of the brain mixed with blood, and Granade considers the painting deeply personal and sentimental surrounding the loss of his grandmother.

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