Merced College opens “Continuum” exhibit
Oil paintings featuring everything from a baby in a bathtub to a man with a pig’s head is on display into next month at the Merced College Art Gallery.
Thanks to an online video chat, students and others got to ask questions of Cynthia Grilli, the Costa Mesa-based artist whose show “Continuum 2005-2015” is up through Oct. 15. She spoke to them during a reception in the gallery Wednesday.
Grilli, 45, contributed about 15 oil paintings for the show. She spoke to students about her creative process in which she often uses photos as a frame of reference.
One piece featured humanoid characters with horns or a pig’s head as they mill around an apartment. Another was based on a photo of her father as he took a bath as a baby.
I don’t like my work to look too tight. I’m very careful with edges, opening them up
Cynthia Grilli
a Costa Mesa-based painter“There’s something spooky about that, just the vulnerability of being small,” she said.
Grilli is a contemporary painter who creates based on the human form, according to gallery staff, using large, textured brush strokes and patches of expressive color.
“I don’t like my work to look too tight,” she said. “I’m very careful with edges, opening them up.”
She urged the students to maintain a focus on pursuing the arts if that’s their dream, saying it will take 15 years to gain footing. That may sound like a long time, she said, but it’s not.
“You get to do what you love to do,” she said. “It sounds so cliche, but it’s the truth.”
The painter teaches at Fullerton College, Saddleback College and California State University, Long Beach.
The professors who choose artists for the gallery picked Grilli because her work fits along with the curriculum of college art classes, according to gallery coordinator Susanne French.
The Merced College Gallery is open from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. and from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and by appointment. For more information, call French at 209-384-6064, or email her at french.s@mccd.edu.
More of Grilli’s work can be seen at www.cynthiagrilli.com.
Thaddeus Miller: 209-385-2453, @thaddeusmiller
This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 8:25 PM with the headline "Merced College opens “Continuum” exhibit."