ART 365: Grace Grothaus
and cotton. Likewise, even though the state is known for its oil production, that production has been in decline since the 1920s. The state now leads in natural gas production. “These industrial landscape paintings represent the modification of the Oklahoma landscape over time. The materials and the composition will work together to illustrate the complex relationship between the natural world and industry inherent in the world today,” she writes in her proposal. With her project, Grothaus plans to explore the similarities and differences between the state’s organic and industrial systems. She was first inspired by this juxtaposition when, flying over the Midwest, she looked down and noticed how the city lights resembled circuit boards. “Clearly we’re making circuit boards for a functional purpose, and clearly we’re making cities for a functional purpose,” Grothaus explained. “And we’re not at all making either one for visual reasons, so why would they have any similarity at all? “And the more I looked at the things we make, these linear systems we’re so interested in building, are just apparent everywhere.” She compared that industrialized system to the way things form organically in nature – the way the branch of a river resembles the branch of a tree or the rivulets down a mountain. Or the way a cloud’s formation matches that of a snowflake. Her work explores the formations of both mechanic and organic things, illustrating them in half-abstract, half-representational paintings that utilize both industrial (mylar) and organic (leaves) materials.
Grace Grothaus, Tulsa, Haze, Mylar, Duralar, acrylic, leaves, ink, 24”x36”x6”
Grothaus begins each project with an aerial photograph, blown up to about 2-feet-by-4-feet, upon which she layers sheets of mylar and begins to freely sketch her ideas, using the photograph as inspiration. “I feel like this loose, free energy of the drawing is kind of an immediate gesture, more in tune and in keeping with the organic structure, as well as the leaves, with the fractal formations in the veining of the leaves,” Grothaus said. “Each piece is a different journey,” she said. Her pieces may have between two and seven layers of mylar each. “I don’t totally know why I’m so interested in working in layers,
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