To view image click on "Access Content Now" above "In this embossed etching by Jerry Grey, a cropped view of a nose and smiling mouth occupy each of the four triangular quadrants. A closer look reveals that images and the textured background are an illusion composed of parallel lines, created with dashes that vary in thickness. Embossing, a texture pressed into the paper, adds a nearly invisible set of lines that define a square at right angles to the paper, and add texture in the bands separating each quadrant. This emphasizes the geometric intersections in the image. This is an early artwork by Grey, created just after her participation in the Emma Lake Artist’s Workshops, an international program in Saskatchewan that was the centre of Modernism in Canada in the mid-twentieth century. Grey’s use of parallel and perpendicular lines in this print foreshadows the work in her “Grid” series (1968-1978). For Grey, the grid was “a different way of looking at space”, a method to explore colour, shape, repetition, and contrast, and “how colour works when you organize it in a certain way”. The close-up of the mouth is another motif Grey returned to in her “Icons of Beauty” series, based on her observation of how often lips are used in advertising to symbolize ideals of beauty, sensuality, seduction and promises of a perfect life. Jerry Grey RCA (1940- ) Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Jerry Grey studied at the Vancouver School of Art (1960-1963) and at the University of Saskatchewan’s Emma Lake Artist’s Workshops. Attending from 1964 to 1966, Grey worked with the Abstract Expressionist Jules Olitski, experimental musician and John Cage, and Harold Cohen, a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence and computer created art. In addition to her painting practice, Grey lectured and taught at across Canada. Known for her vibrant portraits, Grey’s work explores themes of nature, politics, and history. Grey’s work has exhibited nationally since 1963, and is held in public and private collections including the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters in Kuwait; Canada Council Art Bank; National Library of Canada; and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Public commissions include murals in Ottawa for Statistics Canada and the Ottawa Police Station, and in Montreal for the Sisters of Charity (Grey Nuns) hospital. Grey was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Art in 1984."
