William Grob

“The more I paint the more I think that the control of the unknown is the skill... There is something beautiful when an image appears unknown to me and I have to react to it very quickly, like a memory of a dream before it's lost to the void.”

 

William Grob is a Berlin-based artist whose expressive, dreamlike paintings explore memory, intuition, and the shifting space between reality and imagination. In this interview, he discusses his early influences, the role of light and chance in his process, and the ideas behind his recent body of work.

 

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

I came to painting through many back doors. As a little boy, I painted as a way of expression as I lacked the control with my tongue. Many years of speech therapy later I can do okay. My rural upbringing on the tops of Exmoor with a family who’s common language is art set a perfect foundation. I think a lot of my work comes from the depths of this period of my life. All of my paintings should be read without words and they, echoed memories of the Exmoor hills and coastlines.

I studied photography at Falmouth university and thought that would be my career while I kept painting for love, but that idea did not last long. Doing the photography BA taught me a lot, from framing an image to understanding balances of light and dark.. but it did not really help with earning a living. So I did as any reasonable person would do, I ran away to NYC to see if my photography skills could be put to better use there. But that year of running around abruptly ended with deportation from USA. For photographing a hair salon that my tourist visa couldn’t stand on… Ops.

So back in Exmoor applying for any and every residency I could find, back in 2016, I stumbled on a small residency in Berlin which lasted 3 months and sold me the idea of Berlin. I have been painting here ever since.

Your paintings often seem to sit between memory and imagination, full of layered atmospheres and ghostly figures. How do you navigate that space between what’s remembered and what’s invented?

I’ve always liked to think that my paintings lay somewhere between a memory and dream. Memory is not a fixed but an ever-changing cog. I feel we also at times adopt a story as our own, embedding it into a personal narrative maybe even without firsthand recollection. A tale can become yours; A synthetic memory felt as real as any lived experience. A dream has an element of truth, my dreams usually come from a real event, exaggerated or not. Even though these are two different approaches of information they also seem akin, both transient and hazy, both recorded only as good as our expression is. A line that I can never seem to forget is a Marcel Proust’s “the only paradise is the one we have lost,” which I periodically think of when I wake up from a great dream forgotten.

 

 

You speak about working from intuition and embracing chance as part of your process. Are there moments when a painting surprises you, goes somewhere you didn’t expect?

My whole process is about going to places I don’t expect. A paintbrush can fly across the room to hit the painting and change the course everything. I sometimes like to leave the makes they make as wonds or scars of previous stages. Dramatic I know, but I like to think of painting as “dodging and weaving’ like a dance with a brush. The more I paint the more I think that the control of the unknown is the skill. All I aspire to achive to basic understanding of how turpentine will drip, and having the patience to leave large areas ‘nude’ with these rivers of turps. They leave space for the intuition to grow. There is something beautiful when an image appears unknown to me and I have to react to it very quickly, like a memory of a dream before its lost to the void. So to answer your question, I’m surprised all time.

Light and shadow play a strong role in your work, shifting between luminous softness and deep darkness. Has your time in both rural Devon and urban Berlin shaped the way you approach light and colour?

Two contrasting places for colour! With Berlin, the grey scale city, you notice colour from the abundance of it. Whereas, Devon you have the coast that reflects the sky, and because it rains more than it doesn’t everything is so lush with colour. Which maybe has helped with my confidence with colour. I love to juxtapose colour, who wants to see just green grass and blue skys, if you look hard enough there’s always a full spectrum of colour.

Funnily I don’t think light and shadow was extremely prevalent in my work much before the last few years. Now it’s more like the protagonist. In a few recent paintings, ‘watering hole’ & ‘Beyond the clouds’ all characters are looking for the light, captivated by something. I think this understanding of the dephs of light and shadow comes from working with layers. I work on multiple paintings in the same period and that gives time for thin layers which develops the light.

 

 

Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?

I like to get to the studio around 10am and leave around 10pm, Monday – Friday. I used to love painting at the weekend but now having space outside of painting is really important for my flow state. I’m very lucky that I have a communal kitchen opposite my studio, food is really a huge aspect of my life. My dad once said, which I’ll never forget, “Food, Love, Art, what else is there?!” I know they’re all one at the same time, but they’re an important part of a studio practice too. The atelier building I’m in houses around 30 different artists. Its amazing to have a sweet community around and if you leave the door open someone usually comes round with a coffee to say hi. No studio practice is complete without an overload of coffee and sugar (I commend the people who live without it) I’m improving because a few years ago I would have included cigarettes to that magic group of delights. The studio comes with a lot green plants and big windows, everchanging clutter on the floor. Its my home from home.

What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?

I was in Paris early in the year and I always make the trip to the Orangerie Museum to see Monet’s circular rooms. It’s far too busy most of the time but if you’re lucky and have a quiet moment it’s as close to a religious experience I can have as an atheist. With contemporary; I recently went to a Travis MacDonald show at CFA Berlin which completely blew me away, his way with colour, his airy scenes. I love when you blindly go to a show and find someone who’s painting a similar language.

Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?

I have a group show in NYC this September curated by dear friend, Yam Shalev at Room57 Gallery. It will be the first time my work has been back to NYC since my exit. A funny feeling especially knowing I won’t be able to go see my work.