John Grazier

John Grazier (June 23, 1946 – December 27, 2022) was an American realist painter, working with India ink airbrush, pencil and oil paint. He is an American artist of the late-20th century known for his meticulous cross-hatching technique, skewed perspective, and a "dreamlike" representation of seemingly ordinary subjects, such as buses, coffee cups, office buildings, Victorian-style porches, and phone booths.

Early life and education John Howard Grazier III was born in Long Beach, New York on June 23, 1946. His mother, Josephine Stine Grazier, attended Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She went on to receive an advanced degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

His father, who served in World War II, owned the Bellevue Inn, a hotel in the Delaware Water Gap region of Pennsylvania. Several of his paintings were based on his lingering childhood memories of his father's hotel.

In 1968, he went to study at Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. From 1971 to 1972, he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore on a full scholarship.

Career Grazier was awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1974 and from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

Methods Grazier started drawing images of coffee cups, buses, diners, tunnels and bridges at the beginning of his career in 1973.

In May 1980, Washington Post art critic Jo Ann Lewis described Grazier's technique and subject matter as:

“…Silent, unpeopled interiors with empty coffee cups, overlooking a parking lot full of buses… He starts with an overall design in his head, draws in the basic lines with a ruler and then fills in the images with free-hand cross-hatching that retains the integrity of each line...”

Public collections His works, “House on a Hill in a Dream” (1974) and “Memory of a Porch” (1976), are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Another pencil drawing “End of the Line” (1980) is in the Art Institute of Chicago. “Breaking Up” (1976) and “Memory of a Porch (1975) are in the National Gallery of Art. The drawing “Passing Windows in Fall” is included in the Hechinger Collection “Tools as Art.” and the Arkansas Arts Center. Two of his works, "Untitled" and "Rattling Windows", are included in the Pollock-Krasner Foundation image collection.

Grazier's works are also included in the following university collections: “City Lines” (1978) Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, and Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

His work has been purchased by many law firms and corporations. Nixon Peabody, Hogan & Hartson (“The Visitor”, currently Hogan Lovells),

One-Man shows In 1974, he had his first one-man show at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, which featured 22 pieces, including “Sound of the Wind". David Tannous of Washington Star-News wrote of that show: “Grazier deals almost exclusively with sections of architectural exteriors…his perspective twists and changes unpredictably from point to point and in several planes at once… because of this, Grazier’s buildings stretch and pull in different directions…small delicate strokes of the pencil multiply into many-layered cross-hatchings…“ Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina

In September–October 1991, John Grazier had a one-man show named “A Ticket to ...”at the Zenith Gallery in Washington, D.C. Featured pieces included large airbrush India ink paintings on paper: “Echoes: Coaches Idling”, “Junk Yard Dogs”, “You Can’t Go Home Again”, “The Children Who Would Gallop”, “House on a Hill in a Dream."

Greyhound Bus Terminal Project In the summer of 1990, Grazier had signed a $125,000 contract with the Canadian developer Manulife Real Estate to produce 18 black-and-white airbrush paintings for the Greyhound Bus Terminal lobby in Washington, D.C. The restoration of the terminal was part of an agreement with Manulife and area preservationists to keep the 1930s Art Deco building by architect William S. Arrasmith at 1100 New York Ave., N.W. intact as a lobby-entrance to a 12-story office building going up behind it.

Upon its reopening in 1991, the building's lobby featured enlarged photographs of the original 18 paintings featuring buses, coffee cups, lonely cityscapes and Mount Rushmore reflected in a bus windshield.

Exhibitions Grazier's work has been included in many gallery exhibitions, including the Davidson National Print and Drawing Competition, His urban landscape “Memory of a Trombone” has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (American Drawing in Black and White: 1970–80, Brooklyn, New York in 1980). His works have also been exhibited at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (North Carolina), the Tampa Museum of Art (Florida),

Grazier lived and worked in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. He was found dead in his home on December 28, 2022, and is believed to have suffered a fatal heart attack the day before.

Selected works "House on a Hill in a Dream" Memory of a Porch Lithograph 1975 National Gallery of Art 22 1/8 x 29 15/16 in.(56.2 x 76.1 cm) City Lines Graphite on paper 1978 Rose Art Museum 8 x 23 in.(20 x 58 cm) Reflections of Mount Rushmore India ink airbrush, photographs 1991 Lobby of 1100 New York Avenue NW Washington, DC Rebecca's Doll House Oil on canvas Truland Systems Burning Bush Oil on canvas Truland Systems 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm) The Visitor Oil on canvas 2001 Hogan Lovells, formerly known as Hogan & Hartson