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,[1] skewed perspective,[2] and a "dreamlike" representation of seemingly ordinary subjects,[3][4] such as buses, coffee cups,[5] office buildings,[6] Victorian-style porches,[7] and phone booths.

His father, who served in World War II, owned the Bellevue Inn, a hotel in the Delaware Water Gap region of Pennsylvania.

[12] 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...”[5] During the 1990s, his subject matter evolved further, focusing on facades of Victorian architecture buildings,[7] railed porches and balconies, windows, elaborate moldings (“Porch of the Bellevue Inn”, “The Silence of the Attic”), phones (“Sunset Strip”) and drawing persons (“The Carousel of Dreams” in 1996).

[13] His work is also in the private collections of Jim Lehrer,[7] Truland Systems (“Night of the Shooting Stars”, “Dreams of the Wild Child”, “Burning Bush”, "The Prosperous House", "Whispers in the Attic", “Rebecca’s Doll House”),[note 1][21][22] Nixon Peabody, Hogan & Hartson (“The Visitor”, currently Hogan Lovells),[13] Owens Corning Corporation (Toledo, Ohio),[20] Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen family founders of the Katzen Arts Center at the American University in Washington, D.C.[23] 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".

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.

"[7][29] 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.

"House on a Hill in a Dream"