Scott Griffin

bio

Garde Rail Gallery has moved to Austin, TX. As a result, Scott Griffin will no longer show with us in Austin, but will show with our good friends at Yard Dog. Scott has had previous representation at Yard Dog and will continue to show there. We encourage you to visit the Yard Dog web site to view and purchase Scott's work. We will continue to work with Scott at art fairs when the opportunity arises.

Toronto artist Scott Griffin creates dream-like scenes on scrap pieces of wood. Planes, people, trees and houses all seem to float over rugged pieces of industrial detritus. Characters and scenes feel familiar like recurring dreams, frozen in the sinewy medium, unable to escape. In his newest work, Scott applies encaustic to wood, to form shadowy shapes that dance and pose in familiar shimmery stances.

”I was born in Oshawa Canada in 1970 where my father worked in General Motors. When my brother Clint was born a few years later, we moved north to Scugog Island, to a farm where my father kept his airplane, and he flew all the time as a bush pilot in and out of lakes. My grandfather also had an airplane and so did my dad's two brothers.

It was expected of me that I would be a pilot as well, but I wanted to build and make things. I used whatever I could find on the farm to build forts and I would draw pictures on old pieces of wood and paper that were left on the farm from the old owners. It was at this time when I started to create the world, filled with the charters in my pictures that I still draw. My people were often way off in the fields in my pictures. I would put my brother and me in the pictures a lot, and my father is always in his plane.

My family was always extremely cheap, so I learned I had to salvage all materials. When I moved out on my own when I was 18, I obsessively collected stuff. I am a pack-rat. My brother moved in with me when he left home and we continued to make art on things we got from the garbage and we filled our place with hundreds of paintings. We were discovered by a local artist who helped us get a show and from there we got two more shows and so on. We then moved on to Toronto where we lived together until we outgrew our apartment and were kicked out for filling it full of wood and lots of other things collected from the garbage.

I always do my art at night and collect stuff in the day.”