Artists On The Edge: Robert Grimes

Sun., Nov. 5, 2000

By Julianne Crane juliannec@spokesman.com (509) 927-2158

For most of his adult life, visual artist Robert Grimes worked a full-time day job to support his family. At night, he slipped quietly into his studio to create objects just because he was “driven.”

“I can’t define it,” says Grimes. “I don’t even care if what I do is called art. It’s just something I’m compelled to do.”

Born in Cripple Creek, Colo., in 1941, Grimes can’t remember a time when he wasn’t drawing, painting or sculpting.

After jobs with a special effects company and a custom Corvette shop, Grimes designed jewelry for more than 20 years. During that time he continued creating his menagerie of surreal sculpto-paintings, inventing casting techniques in fiberglass and acrylic.

Holed away in his basement studio and various storage areas are more than a thousand sketches, and hundreds of finished canvases and sculptures.

When he takes one medium as far as he feels he can take it, he switches to another to keep himself fresh.

“Right now I’m trying to advance ancient bas-relief wood techniques, taking them to where I can,” says Grimes.

Each bas-relief sculpture contains hundreds of small wood pieces, individually cut and fit together to create a physical illusion of space. His larger works can take months to finish.

“His detail and quality are phenomenal,” says Steve Gibbs, director of the Art Spirit Gallery in Coeur d’Alene.

Gibbs saw Grimes’ work a couple of years ago and asked him to hang it in the gallery. After a one-person show in April 1998, his pieces began selling.

“I’ve sold more in the last year than I have in my whole life,” Grimes says.

Gibbs says people are taken with the creativity and whimsy of Grimes’ work.

“It is incredibly intricate and unique,” says Gibbs. “I’ve never seen anything like it out there.”

Grimes draws inspiration from such masters as Rembrandt, Cezanne and Picasso.

“It’s not so much what they did, nor how they did it,” he says. “It’s the fact that they had the courage to free their minds from old limitations and create something different.”

Artists on the edge Experience artists’ work in many ways

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