Exhibition Opening, Artist Demonstration, and Meet & Greet Saturday, May 29th from 4-7 pm at the J. Petter Galleries.

Prior to her life as an artist, Sheila Grant was a social worker. Social work entails understanding and exploring emotions, which is what ultimately led her to art. Art, in Grant's view, is emotions coming into the world in another form for oneself and others. Her process as an artist is deeply personal. It explores inner, wordless dialogue and feelings, and uses the canvas as a visual record of that process. The creative process serves as a vehicle for reflection and transformation, allowing what is within to flow outside and onto the canvas. Sheila Grant's medium of choice has changed over time but a consistent theme in all her work is emotional expression, energy, and the exploration of mood through color.

Grant is drawn to abstraction in her painting because it omits form and representation, thereby removing our tendency to categorize. Color, texture, and movement take over as the avenue of expression. Grant uses the technique of layered color blocking, fluid paint methods, and controlled textured mediums to engender vibrancy and a sense of viscosity to the work.

Inter-Spaces, Sheila Grant's most recent body of work, focuses on space and multiple viewpoints of earth's surfaces to explore the emotional landscape of the human experience. Enveloped by space, its energy, velocity, continual movement, and stillness make us turn inward to explore the vastness within our own being.  Our emotional expansion and reflection, ebbs and flows, resonate with the primal power of space. With the colors, textures, and movement of her art, Grant tries to emote that which overwhelms and empowers us.