GRAYSON CHANDLER: PLANTING TRACES
APRIL 20- JUNE 20, 2024
Grayson Chandler’s Planting Traces brought a vivid and contemplative body of work to Matney Gallery in spring 2024. Working in watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on paper, Chandler created a suite of layered abstractions that exist in a delicate space between the seen and the imagined. His work invites viewers to look closely—then look again—as translucent washes and fine, organic lines shift between microcosmic detail and expansive landscapes.
Chandler’s imagery often suggests natural forms without ever fully depicting them: petal-like shapes, tendrils, insect wings, coral, and bubbles surface in diaphanous compositions that might just as easily evoke tide pools, cellular structures, or distant mountain ranges. The experience is both intimate and vast. Up close, his paintings feel like looking through a microscope. Step back, and those same shapes seem to dissolve into sky, water, or earth.
What binds the work together is a sense of quiet transformation. Chandler is deeply interested in how we assign meaning to what we see—and in the space between perception and imagination. His paintings don’t explain; they invite. The viewer is encouraged to interpret, to meditate, to consider not only what they are seeing but how they are seeing. Each piece becomes a site of personal reflection.
Art historian Margaret Richardson, in her catalog essay for the exhibition, describes Chandler’s work as a kind of perceptual test—akin to a Rorschach blot or an unfolding dream. She notes how Chandler’s visual language, while rooted in nature, speaks to deeper psychological and spiritual concerns. Themes of water, journeying, and transformation recur, offering subtle prompts for the viewer to consider their own inner landscapes.
Importantly, Chandler does not assert a specific message. Rather than illustrating ecological or philosophical ideas, his work gestures toward them, leaving space for the viewer to bring their own associations. The result is contemplative rather than didactic—an art of suggestion, ambiguity, and beauty.
Planting Traces resonated strongly with audiences at Matney Gallery. Visitors responded to the show’s immersive visual rhythm and the invitation to slow down and observe. In a time when quick takes and surface impressions dominate, Chandler’s paintings offer something quieter and more enduring: an opportunity to linger, to wonder, and to see the world anew.
Artist Statement
Fascinated by the intrinsic order and beauty of nature, My work attempts to capture and abstract its character in a manner that is uncanny, yet familiar. Deeply curious about the forces that govern human reason and faith, my work probes the amphibious network linking logic, intuition, consciousness, and emotion. Through this perspective, we are encouraged to draw upon our own experience as a means of shaping the border between real and imaginary. Moreover, we are encouraged to explore how the shape of our experience shapes how we see, and how what we see is largely colored by what we can recognize. Within this aesthetic, the spectator is invited to enter a space that meditates on the means through which we conceive and distill meaning and sensation from space and form.
Biography
Born in Houston, Texas 1994, Grayson Chandler’s exposure to the visual arts began from a young age. Since graduating with a BFA from the University of North Texas in 2018, Chandler has been selling and exhibiting his paintings in Texas, and abroad. His early success can be demonstrated through numerous solo and group shows, garnering his artwork a rapidly growing admiration from significant collectors and Houston institutions alike. His 2022 solo IN VIA, at Deborah Colton Gallery, saw his work acquired into the MFAH’s permanent collection. Other notable shows include a 2021 Solo at Pearl Fincher Museum in Spring, Texas, as well as his upcoming solo at the Jung Center in 2024. In addition to his own professional practice, Chandler also serves on the board of the Visual Arts Alliance (VAA) — an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization seeking to provide educational and career opportunities for serious practitioners of the visual arts within the Houston community.