Freya Grand, Pinnacle 2, oil on canvas

In the early spring of 2009, Gallery Neptune presented the lush paintings of Washington, DC artist Freya Grand. Included in the exhibit’s introduction was this paragraph: “Although we are immediately presented with imagery large and strong, the artist takes great care to have us investigate her work slowly and at close range where we examine the spray of water, the arid crumble of rocky terrain, mist as myst and other phenomenon that evaporate and disappear into the unknown.” My recent studio interview with Freya recalled memories of the close examination of things and the drama of creating miniature environments, key aspects to the work she produces today.

Freya grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. Her father was a medical professor at the University of Wisconsin and early interests fell both in art and science. In fact while growing up, Freya was thinking about becoming a physician: I was always drawing things and making things as a child like most artists. Making things with my hands was probably my very favorite thing to do in the whole wide world. I never thought of it as a career, I don’t think kids think of it as a career, they just think of it as a way to enter their own private world and that’s the way it was for me too. My father actually encouraged me to be an artist. He said “don’t be a physician, it’s no kind of life.”

Aaron Bohrod, All This and World War II, 1978

My parents’ friends were all people in the art faculty at the university. I remember my dad saying that he thought the company of doctors was boring and that he’d much rather spend his time with artists. So I met a lot of artists and visited artists’ studios when I was a kid. Our closest family friend was a super realist painter named Aaron Bohrod. He was a man who made these hyper realistic symbolic still lives, using scraps and things he’d find in second hand stores. I can remember going into his studio many times and seeing the shelves full of odd things he had collected and that people had given him. I was really impressed by the fact that he really wanted to paint more than anything else, painting was his great joy and he was always in his studio, with the baseball game on, painting.

So as a child, what did Freya find herself making in her studio? And what was her studio? The bedroom floor, of course.

I loved making little dioramas, making little scenes, making little environments that I could populate with little figures I would make myself. Little scenes and sets which were a very important part of playing.

Egg Carton Theater

Here at Studio Neptune, we know exactly what Freya is talking about. Our current project involves small worlds created inside egg cartons.

Freya: I think what’s funny now is that my work has no sign of humans in it at all! But the one thing that has carried over is the desire to create an object that is imbued with a certain kind of feeling and life. I think about that feeling of being immersed in a world that was mine, and loving the drama. In my dioramas I always had a plot and characters in mind and in a way the same thing is true in my landscapes. They are imbued with a strong set of feelings even though they are not as literally translated as they would have been in the child objects that I made.

And now, a peak inside Freya’s studio.

Freya Grand in her studio, April 2011

Visit Freya Grand’s stunning website at www.freyagrand.com.