Materiality co-owner and painter Blair Vaughn-Gruler has exhibited in Santa Fe for the better part of 2 decades, including a long tenure at http://gvgcontemporary.com/.
She is also represented by these galleries across the country:
https://blueprint-gallery.com/artists/blaire-vaughn-gruler/ in Dallas, Texas
https://www.walkerfineart.com/blair-vaughngruler in Denver, Colorado
https://www.loriaustingallery.com/blair-vaughn-gruler-paintings.html in northern California
https://www.drewmarcgallery.com/artist/blair-vaughn-gruler in St. Petersburg, Florida
Blair Vaughn-Gruler makes paintings that are driven by procedure and process. Accumulation, repetition, erasure and the physical motions made in the process of mark making harken back to her many years practicing martial arts, and foregrounds the body’s relationship to painting.
A Michigan native and New Mexico transplant, Vaughn-Gruler has been obsessed with paint since childhood. Her spare, non-objective compositions are exercises in organizing space. Even when shapes or lines repeat themselves to excess, a calm arises out of the chaos.
As the conceptual love child of Cy Twombly and Agnes Martin, Vaughn-Gruler (born in 1955) makes paintings to reconcile her early modernist training with the lived experience of the information age.
She holds a BFA in painting from Northern Michigan University and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Art.
Blair Vaughn-Gruler
Lamy, New Mexico
Education
MFA 2010 Visual Art Vermont College of Fine Arts
Montpelier, Vermont
BFA 1979 Painting Northern Michigan University
Marquette, Michigan
Graduate 1974 Illustration Kendall School of Design
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2023
Art Santa Fe | Santa Fe NM
Non-objective Narrative (part two) | GVG Contemporary | Santa Fe, NM
2022
Non-objective Narrative (part one) | GVG Contemporary | Santa Fe, NM
2021
Warehouse Style | Solo Exhibition | GVG Contemporary, Santa Fe NM
2019
co.elaboration | 10 year anniversary exhibition | GVG Contemporary. Santa Fe NM
2018
Blair Vaughn-Gruler | Solo Exhibition | ARC Contemporary, Cottonwood AZ
2017
Compulsive Organization | Solo Exhibition | GVG Contemporary, Santa Fe NM
2015
WHITE | Solo Exhibition | GVG Contemporary, Santa Fe NM
2014
The Language of Paint | Solo Exhibition | GVG Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
2013
Shingle Style | One Person Exhibition | Arroyo Gallery, Telluride, CO
2012
Poetry of Geometry | One Person Exhibition | Rawls Museum Arts, Cortland, Virginia
2011
Dangerous Playground | Solo Exhibition | GVG Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Poetry of Geometry | One Person Exhibition | ArtSpace Gallery, College of Southern Nevada
2010
Viscosity and Geometry | Solo Exhibition | GVG Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Occlude Penetrate Resolve | One Person MFA Exhibition | Wood Art Gallery, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, Vermont
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023
Internal Mapping | Walker Fine Art | Denver Colorado
Intersect Palm Springs | Kay Contemporary Art | Palm Springs, CA
Internal Mapping | Walker Fine Art | Denver, CO
2022
30th Annual Emerald Coast National | Northwest Florida State College
Modus Operandi | Group Exhibition | Walker Fine Art, Denver CO
2021
Tension and Release | Group Exhibition | Walker Fine Art, Denver, CO
2021 International Juried Exhibition | Center for Contemporary Art | Bedminster, MA
Art During Covid 19 | Virtual Exhibition on Artsy | Contemporary Art Projects USA
2020
Compulsion | Group Exhibition | Mary Tomás Gallery, Dallas, TX
Synesthetic Ciphers | Group Exhibition | Walker Fine Art, Denver, Co
(additional exhibition history available upon request)
Current Gallery Representation
Walker Fine Art, Denver CO http://www.walkerfineart.com
Lori Austin Galleries, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg and Sebastopol, CA
http://www.loriaustingallery.com
Blue Print Gallery, Dallas TX https://blueprint-gallery.com
GVG Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM www.gvgcontemporary.com
Drew Marc Gallery, St. Petersburg, FL https://drewmarcgallery.com
I use painting to describe my particular interior territory, manifesting it as a physical act which turns into a physical object. I am trying to collate the sky with the daily chores, for example, or the little squares on the calendar with the act of walking, and the place where the mysteries of emotion meet the urgent business of the intellect.
Mapping describes my work because it is a verb. I like to host mediations with disparate modalities and media to find, fix, fold or meld together heart and mind, past and present, truth and fiction. The process of reconciliation is ongoing.
Formally, I gravitate towards making paintings where the marks coalesce into an all-over surface, where chaos smoothes out into the equivalent of white noise and the narrative aspects of shapes and marks begin to dissolve.
The loops and lines in my current work might describe a path or a road, but at the same time, it is also a thought, a gesture, a telegram from the great unknown, and paint just trying to describe itself.
Blair Vaughn-Gruler 2023
Santa Fe, New Mexico