Ye Olde Classmates: Gary Grier

Gary Grier and I met as room mates at the SVA dorms. Actually we were considered suite mates, but as "Suite mate" sounds uncomfortably close to "sweet mate" most of us stuck to "room mate". Gary was pretty reserved and I usually took his silence as a cue that he didn't want to talk to me. He was the first to move into our floor and quickly snatched up the coveted double-sized room with the balcony overlooking downtown Savannah. He often sat out there alone listening to a single song loop for hours at maximum volume, sometimes rap and hip hop, sometimes r&b, the Bee Gees, and occasionally gospel. Now and then, on a walk home from class he would wave from the balcony with a gold-teethed smile, but we never had a conversation.

Four years later in New York when Jeff Koons took me on as a painting assistant, to my surprise I found Gary at the color mixing table. Jeff put us together on a project in which we created a sort of parody of one of Jeff's donkey paintings as one of those things at a carnival that you stick your head in to get your picture taken. We quickly became close friends, and have stayed in touch since.

The American tradition is strongly present in Gary's work. Wyeth is in the dryness of the air, and his figures seem trapped in a Hopperesque world of isolation and quietude. They loop like songs on repeat. There's the guy on the bike again, the beat up car Dad, and Grandma. His canvases tell a lonesome tale of the dirty south, but not a hopeless one. Church steeples sometimes stand bathed in sunlight to beckon drifting souls from their bikes and cars. Even the walls cry out "Jesus Saves" as they pass by. Sometimes his sitters stare out from windows with a Vermeer-like longing, and Gary himself stares out the same way at us from the easel. There is an earnest soul searching in these canvases, and this is the reason behind them.

Early on at SVA Savannah our teacher Anthony Palliser became a mentor to Gary, and he occasionally appears in Anthony's paintings.

"Gary" by Anthony Palliser

"Gary Running" by Anthony Palliser

Ye Olde Classmates: Michael Lierly

Michael Lierly is one of my all-time favorite people and one of my best friends. We were classmates in Savannah and New York, and both got our MFA at Indiana University. He teaches at University of Arkansas at Little Rock this semester, but will soon be Moving to Austin, Texas. Formerly a member of the band Soophie Nun Squad, he now plays guitar for Universe.

I find this one exceptional.

A clever take on renaissance altarpieces. . Ok, maybe this one is my favorite. The frame here is a stuffed snake made by our goodfriend, Eli, a performance artist.

A piece from school. Probably Max's class considering the light.

We were both students of Assael and heavily influenced by him. I suppose we are similar as painters in many other ways, including an inability to settle on one thing thematically, stylistically, or geographically. I think that's great. We are writing a book together, but I won't tell you what it's about yet.

Lovely color study.

I own this one. One of his best drawings I think.

I find this one powerful an psychologically charged.

This was a collaboration. The model for the painting did the background.

Ye Olde Classmates: Charles Ladson

Charles Ladson. There were definitely minor "movements" within our small student body at SVA, Savannah, and one was largely led by Charles. His work always kind of looked similar to this, but less developed, of course. I always find his work special and his craft inspiring.

Ye Olde Classmates: Julia Martin

Julia Martin was one of my best friends during my freshman year at School of Visual Arts, Savannah. The most extraordinary thing about her work is that she hardly uses reference material at all. It's mostly all from her imagination. She lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee. I admire her natural sense of color, light, and composition, and her interpretation of the human form.

Teachers Of Mine: Jack Richards

My introduction to drawing the figure from life was my Drawing I class with Jack Richards at SVA Savannah. Jack considers himself less a "painter" and more of an all-around renaissance man, but I was inspired by his painting nonetheless.

I worked for Jack as a studio assistant for a few different projects including set paintings for the Hilton Head Ballet and a series of paintings about flying food.


I blocked in the backgrounds on this flying pizza, one of my favorite Jack paintings. I don't think I even realized that there would be a flying pizza in it.

Much of Jack's painted work has an anachronistic quality that attracted me as a young student. He has a method of purposefully putting cracks in the surface involving making his own traditional rabbit skin and marble gesso and crumpling the canvas before stretching. It really does effectively make the painting look a century old.


As a student I did a portrait of Jack, but don't know what became of it.

Jack is a self-made expert on paranormal-type things, and had a wildly successful "Ghost Walk, Ghost Walk" tour company in Savannah. I think this painting is somewhat of a Stonehenge meets crop circles thing. It's got that cracked surface too.

Jack does not seem to have an art website, so I don't have very much biographical information on him, but maybe it's more interesting that he remains a little mysterious and enigmatic, like his work.

Teachers of Mine: Anthony Palliser

Anthony Palliser was another of my favorite painting teachers at School of Visual Arts Savannah. He's a classy English fellow and a great storyteller. He has known legendary artists, although I will not attempt to recall them here. His work is methodical but soulful and experimental. He is a blend of Balthus, Luician Freud, Stanley Spencer, Chuck Close and even Philip Pearlstein.

After attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, anthony settled in Paris, where he still lives and works. He frequents Savannah, and I was fortunate to cross paths with him during my years there.

I just got the chance to reconnect with Anthony last spring at his studio in Paris, and I managed to get a signed copy of his beautiful new book. One of the things that amazed me the most is the volume and breadth of

work in his studio.

The work ranged from traditional landscapes and portraits to near abstraction moments of pop art. It was a treat leafing through stacks upon tidy stacks of Anthony's drawings, and seeing his delight in the process.

Anthony became a mentor figure to my friend Gary Grier, who often appears in his paintings, such as the portrait below.

Looking back, I still can't believe the caliber of teachers were were blessed with at such a small art school in the deep south.

Here is a short video about Anthony's recent show at the Telfair Museum in Savannah.

Recently I have enjoyed his portraits of the actress, Kristen Scott-Thomas. What a face.

See more at AnthonyPalliser.com