Make Me Dance, 40"X60" (diptych), acrylic on canvas (gallery wrap), 2009, Maxim Grunin
I am a formally trained artist, specializing in studio visual arts such as drawing and painting. What I do can be labeled as contemporary art practice. I am an immigrant from Russia, but I am not at all Russian. It's true that Russian is my first language and being brought up in the former Soviet Union makes me "culturally" Russian. I also have mixed Jewish and Ukrainian background, but I am foremost Canadian. My education and experience in the field of visual arts prohibit me from being ignorant or under-informed about cultural nature of my job. I am critical to every motion of my body and mind when it comes to painting. Classical, figurative and avant-garde influences as well as conceptual, art theoretic aspects are present in my work. "Make Me Dance" is responsive to my emotional state of a city dweller. I also let the methods of applying paint interact somewhat under-mediated in this piece. I construct the image with implied narrative and then disrupt it with abstract paint application. This results in an unexpected and pregnant visual surface.
