Cary Griffiths

Salt Lake City-born and based artist Cary Griffiths paints to the accompaniment of jazz music, and one sees its influence in the resulting compositions, which combine improvisational forms with structured and deliberate execution. His acrylic canvases are based around series of looped, overlapping and intersecting lines, some wild and drip-like, others graphic and precise. These playful forms become the irregular latticework for Griffiths’ formal exercises with color. He fills certain closed areas formed by the intersecting lines of black paint with bold, contrasting tones and leaves others blank, creating surprising juxtapositions of shapes and shades that take up the central themes of abstract painting.

Rather than rely on rectilinear grids as the basis for his enthralling experiments, Griffiths employs a delightful fluidity. His application of colors respects edges and outlines meticulously, but he applies those lines in a variety of swirling, splattering and cascading ways. The resulting compositions combine a quasi-musical cadence with incredible painterly sophistication.