Gregg Emery: A Meditative Approach to Painting Amidst the Chaos of the Pandemic
For artist Gregg Emery, art is his love language, and he is spreading his message all over town, from public art projects to creative collaborations and has even broached the new world of NFTs and beyond.
Growing up in a small town on the US-Canadian border, a short drive from Montreal, Emery got his initial inspiration from a nearby Mohawk reservation and by learning to quickly sketch hockey players. In fact, Gregg says that he was drawing and painting even before he could write. “I just started making pictures and never stopped. I was always sketching people and things and would often even give drawings to the minister at the end of church services. I still feel like the North Country gives me the ground and foundation for everything.”
This passionate painter was brought up in a church where his mother, a writer, served as an organist as well as learning about meditation practice from his grandparents while attending Quaker meeting. His father, a math and computer teacher, car mechanic, bee keeper and gardener taught him a connection to the math that exists in all things, the importance of hard work, getting up in the morning and a deep love of and relationship to the land. He continued to study meditation practices and the similarities and contrasts of different approaches to art and ways of life, all parts of these worlds would heavily influence his career. “My travels throughout the world have tempered what I do in gestural painting with what I have seen and experienced firsthand as well,” explains Gregg.
It is these inspirations which have allowed him to test his process, somewhere between a ‘meditative moment and an athletic event’ in different ways, including when he was asked to make his mark on an 8,000 square foot mural on Roosevelt Island. This unique project all began when Krista Ninavaggi, founder and director of interior design firm K&Co., brought him on as the third artist in three years to work on a large outdoor pool that they had been originally brought in for a much-needed aesthetic update. Gregg’s work helped to draw attention to the pool, and each year they continue to bring on someone new. According to Gregg, this pool project also dramatically impacted how he worked, especially given all of the texture and tiles. “A former student reminded me of the technique of putting a brush on the far end of a stick to give perspective and do these circles by hand, which I had never tried. It’s a lot more work but it is beautiful and opened things up quite a bit. Think of it: 20 circles on the deck of the pool. When I measured them, the smallest circle was larger than anything I had ever done.”
Though he gave up his Brooklyn studio during the pandemic, Gregg, who teaches and lives on the Upper West Side, remained resilient and was given an artist residency with a non-profit group called 4heads. Gregg and his fellow artists were given space on Governor’s Island from 2020 through 2021. “I was there during lockdown and had a whole floor of an old, abandoned house with other artists. It was great but also put things into perspective.”
His painting process during the pandemic period? Well, sticking to his own style which he has been doing for over 20 years now. With a focus on circles and horizontal drags across, Gregg explains
that this just opens up how beautiful the simplicity is. “During this time, I limited my color palette even more. There were six different whites I played with, all seen on the layers of peeling paint in my Governor’s Island studio. I became the circle painter, which my high school self would have made fun of, and now I am also the white-on-white painter. I really focused on calm. Being alone and watching traffic go across the bridges, around the harbor influenced me as well. It just really brought me back to the small country town, Bombay, NY, where I grew up. The people in cars on the George Washington Bridge during rush hour outnumber the people living in my town. I’m just fascinated by all these people and their unique stories. Every line in the painting is like one of those individual strands that make up this fabric. Meditating on that flow of the day keeps drawing me back to the painting process.”
This time living alone and realizing that the absence of human contact and physical touch was palpable, got Gregg’s collaboration juices flowing with fellow artists as well. “I found ways to work with poets, musicians, DJs, a whisky maker and other creatives. I started taking time to meditate on what was really important. Next was the importance of human touch and human contact and the loss of that, and third was finding ways to use my voice as a means to provide a platform for others that don’t always get heard. My way of giving back was reaching out to younger artists as well as those who didn’t have the same opportunities and providing this space for them. Artist Guy Philoche was a huge inspiration for me.”
Gregg not only got his groove back, but also added to his growing skill set, especially as he started taking on new projects, including NFTs, which led to being approached by The Financial Times. The paper followed his journey while he was showing his work digitally through the pandemic as well as physically before Covid broke out. His NFT navigating adventure was even made into a documentary, allowing him to connect with experts in this new medium. After much publicity and his first NFT being sold in one week, this painter found himself in the prime of his career showing his NFTs in Miami during Art Basel and constantly being recognized at parties.
This forward-thinking artist currently remains focused on everything from his physical paintings to drawings and even teaching others more about making and marketing NFTs. “There are so many younger as well as older artists who are trying to make money off of it, but don’t know much about it. Anybody can really do it, it’s not that hard. I use it as a platform for my own personal art as it adds motion to my works, making them more meditative. I also see it as it platform to highlight community, connection and collaborations.”
Most recently, he was hired to, once again, sketch musicians and attendees of the famous ‘Electric Forest’ music festival. At the last gathering in the woods of Northern Michigan he sketched beat box champion Honeycomb, and the two are now discussing partnering on an NFT together which would include music and words along with some sketching. “I haven’t done this with NFTs yet, it’s all just at early stages which I believe will settle down a bit and become another artistic medium. Creatives are just starting to discover what is possible in the metaverse, which is a whole new world to collaborate and explore. I like the democratic nature of this digital world and that authenticity seems to be slowly rising to the top. A young Latina artist right now is making money steadily by posting digital versions of her graffiti work. There is no gallery attached to the NFTs, so you are in charge of the whole thing. I also figured out how to highlight my nearly decade long partnership with the Poetry Society of New York in some upcoming collaborations. You really shouldn’t be seeing the painting without the words that were formed in connection with the visual art in some way, and when poets read their own poems, it’s even more beautiful. I embedded the audio of my creative collaborations with the NFT fused together and am also trying to do some things like that with video and audio clips.”
Other exciting projects in the pipeline currently include a limited series of NFTs with a good friend of his, the renowned basketball legend and five-time Olympian Teresa Edwards, which are gearing up to be released early this summer. Edwards’ recent book called Black Gold narrates her remarkable life and career and this will be her first ever NFT.
Gregg, who strives to show people a new way of seeing things through his art, aims to do the same thing with his students at Upper West Side College Preparatory School where he served as the head of Visual Arts and Art History for nearly 8 years and continues to teach painting and drawing classes. He is even a digital resident with a group called Silver Arts Project that provides studios spaces in the 4 World Trade Building and creates a platform for a range of incredible artists. “The students are amazing artists and such brilliant, savvy kids from having grown up in the city. I always get inspired and pushed by my kids. They are sincere and I always get an honest review from them. It keeps me inspired and humble.”
This A-list artist who continues to push boundaries with his great body of work, highlights one of the greatest moments of his career. “I was able to show my figurative drawings and paintings together, something which rarely happens because galleries had said that people wouldn’t see the connection. A lot of my paintings were born out of the drawings and sketches and they are all tied together. I am like two completely different artists that are very much related.”
Gregg also recently won an Instagram contest to create artistry designing and painting the entire storefront for LAAMs, an eclectic store where you will find an on-site tattoo artist as well as
By pushing his own boundaries, this always-evolving artist also pushes his audience to rethink their own.
