Grant Drumheller

Grant Drumheller’s paintings, whether landscapes, cityscapes, or intimate interior scenes, are characterized by careful attention to light and color. Although the artist’s gestural technique avoids specific detail or narrative, he still creates a sense of time and place with his treatment of light and an expressionistic palette.

The recipient of numerous awards in his career, including a Fulbright-Hays Grant in Painting to Italy, a Blanche Colman Award, a National Endowment for the Art fellowship, and a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Drumheller also spent time as a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. He has returned to Italy and Europe to teach and paint numerous times throughout his career.

Grant Drumheller’s studies with Philip Guston, James Weeks and Reed Kay at Boston University, where he received both his BFA and MFA degrees, provided him with first-hand knowledge of Boston Expressionism, which was squarely situated in the tradition of figurative painting. Drumheller taught art at the University of New Hampshire for over three decades and retired in 2019. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in Italy,  Boston, and New York, as well as at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH and, most recently, the Museum of Art at UNH.

Drumheller works in his studio in Portsmouth, NH and lives in New Castle. 

The painting in the collection comes from a group of images of beaches and people walking with their dogs that I have been doing for years. I live on an island facing the ocean, and the beach is a primary destination. What better thing to do alone or with a friend, one of life’s pleasures and intimacies, walking and conversing together with dogs.