Yorik (Skull and Orb Vanitas Still Life Oil Painting in Cool Colors)
Painted by Hudson Valley based artist, Carl Grauer, in 2022
oil on canvas
Signed verso
Excellent condition
NATURAL THRESHOLDS, 2025
Three deaths, all within two years, (my mother, best friend, and childhood art teacher and mentor) became catalysts for exploring emotional thresholds, seeking symbolic encounters in nature, and connections beyond the physical realm in this new series of work, Natural Thresholds. Through personal rituals of renewal, transformation, belief, and observation, I commemorate the journey from sorrow to solace and the celebratory moments where grief transforms into hope.
The paintings in Natural Thresholds, framed by circular portals and painted in oil, elicit movement between liminal spaces—between shadow and light, and between the physical and the spiritual. By reframing the mythology of mortality and its transformation, I search to restore a connection by merging the tactile into the celestial. With paintings of objects as humble as a small feather found on a walk or views as vast as a star-scape, the connection between the natural and the spiritual worlds are simultaneously held together when they are diametrically opposed. Reflecting upon this universal longing for harmony, I am reminded of loved ones by all these fleeting moments of beauty.
Natural Thresholds explores the interplay between loss and discovery, reminding us that some losses can lead to a greater purpose. This series celebrates the emotional landscapes we navigate in search of meaning and connection—a path where compassion may be found as we move from one shadow to the next and into the light.
About the artist:
Born: 1975, Wilson, Kansas, USA
Carl Grauer (he/they) is an artist, a painter, and a teacher. Grauer works within the genres of realism, impressionism, surrealism and narrative art. They have an intense interest in portraiture, the figure, queer history, time, the natural world, ritualism, mortality, and the spiritual realm. Born in rural Kansas, Grauer completed their bachelor's degree in Human Biology from the University of Kansas and their MFA in Medical Illustration from the University of Michigan. They spent two years in London studying figurative and portrait painting with several studios and garnered success showing work both nationally and internationally, most notably for the Hudson Valley Artists 2025: Movement exhibition at the Samuel Dorsky Museum, the Wells Art Contemporary Award in the UK, and exhibiting with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London. Grauer has also participated in the Constance Saltonstall Artist Residency, Jentel Artist Residency, and the Blue Mountain Artist Residency. Currently, they are working and living in Poughkeepsie, New York and showing with several galleries nationally including Carrie Haddad in Hudson, New York.