Griswold’s emblematic video tableaux evolved from the artist’s collage-based manipulation of composite imagery to develop compositions for oil paintings. Collage has been at the heart of his compositional process since the beginning, whether juxtaposing out-of scale or fragmentary physical objects within an outdoor setting, photographing a staged miniature model or diorama space, or even cutting up and stitching together his own faithful copies of baroque oil paintings on canvas.

Cutting up and manipulating reproductions of Old Master paintings, often sourced from auction catalogs, eventually led to his magnetic paintings where iconographical cut-out components could be rearranged on a background painted on tinned steel sheet.

The advent of the iPhone, with its cadre of apps devoted to manipulating still images and videos, allowed the leap to spontaneous digital collage. Griswold maintains the link to physical objects and spaces in developing his compositions by way of performance captures, and manipulation of artifacts in front of oil paintings, both his own and those in his collection.

A solo exhibition at the new Tatistcheff Gallery in Santa Monica, California, the New York dealer’s short-lived outpost. This series of oil paintings, ranging widely in scale, featured miniature models arranged in the coastal mountains of the Santa Ynez Valley, bathed in sunlight reminiscent of the artist’s time working in Greece. Griswold’s paint handling heavily from the academic realism championed by Jean Léon Gerôme and the Orientalists of the late 19th century.

From roughly 2016 through the Pandemic, Griswold collected and assembled four short YouTube videos comprised of stills of his paintings with lively, animated video collages. These “tableaux vivant” inspired oil paintings, which in turn were often inserted into later scenes. The artist often retained the accidental “sound collage” of the combined audio tracks accumulated throughout the assembly of each video collage.

Complex pictorial, symbolic imagery in the manner of emblem books from 16th and 17th century Europe. The classical Greco-Roman mythological references common to Griswold’s works persist in many of the titles, but the complex imagery confounds as much as it illuminates. This tension allows subconscious, surreal interpretations to resonate.

A recurring inspiration throughout Griswold’s work is the Dance of Death, or la Danse Macabre, populated with lively skeletons. Examples set by Holbein and Rowlandson are favorites. This medieval allegorical concept of the all-conquering and equalizing power of death is often simply a launching point for complex layers of implied meaning, often framed in a satirical or humorously frenetic presentation.

Obscure rites and mysteries centering on cult figures such as Orpheus, Dionysus, Persephone, Aphrodite, and others recur in Griswold’s works. Fixation with the afterlife and the underworld permeated ancient Greek thought, producing some of the most perplexing imagery. Evoking this complexity without revealing the point where subconscious association departs from art historical and classical references frees the viewer to vicariously participate in the mind altering proceedings.

Epic Homeric poetry and stories of the trials and transformations of Greek heroes provide rich fodder for classical surrealism, often in its darkest form.

Medea, Circe and Hecate appear frequently in Griswoldian imagery, embedded deeply within epic tragedies and tales of redemption and purification. The hallucinatory, vibratory nature of the short video loops provides the perfect vehicle for suggesting the sort of trance that suspends reason and opens doors to enlightenment.

The monsters depicted are celebrated mostly in vulnerable states, recalling their innocence, vulnerability or hubris at the hands of a merciless titan, god or goddess.

Contradictory aspects of the prime movers of the universe, and their inscrutable characters and often reckless natures both ground and explode layers of symbolical and allegorical imagery. Primal associations inevitably dominate.

Et in Arcadio ego, sacred precincts, chthonic sites, eponymic origin sites, visions, apparitions and hallucinations imposed on mundane vistas.