Grill draws inspiration from an assortment of handmade documents. Birth certificates, family heirlooms, and baptismal records become a rich archive of introspection in her hands. Over the past several years, 18th- and 19th-century embroidery samplers have become particularly central to her work. Made by young girls to show facility with decorative needlework, these samplers demonstrate a meticulous sense of craft and a sensitivity towards domestic labor. Grill does not directly recreate these embroideries in her paintings, but rather translates her immediate impressions of them into small-scale drawings, slowly accreting a library of sketches which provide the grammar for her larger-scale, painted works. While Grill’s paintings channel the marks of these samplers, their intimations are particular to her individual process.
Clare Grill (born 1979, Chicago, IL) received her MFA from the Pratt Institute in 2005 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include Wich Language and Oyster, M+B, Los Angeles, CA; At the Soft Stages, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY; There's The Air, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY; and Touch'd Lustre, Zieher Smith & Horton, New York, NY. Group exhibitions include Of Flesh and Air, Marta Cervera Gallery, Madrid, Spain; The Feminine in Abstract Painting, Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York, NY; Deep! Down! Inside!, Hales Gallery, NY; and New Skin, curated by Jason Stopa, Monica King Gallery, New York, NY. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, ArtNews, Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. Clare Grill lives and works in Queens, NY.