Victoria Brace & Robert Grimes

Join us on Friday, June 12 for ArtWalk and the Opening Reception of the Victoria Brace & Robert Grimes Exhibit. Meet the artists and view their latest works. Enjoy a lively evening of fine art, fine dining and good friends in Downtown Coeur d’Alene. Everyone is welcome!

 Summer Hours: Open every day from 11-6.

This show is sponsored by Syringa Japanese Café & Sushi Bar. We thank them for their continued support of art and community in our region.

 Victoria and Robert will give an informal demonstration and discussion of their work starting at 1:00 on Saturday, June 13.

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Victoria Brace

Spokane artist, Victoria Brace, was born and trained in Russia, where she graduated from the Moscow College of Art. Her work can be found in private collections across Russia, Western Europe and the United States. As a child she was kept busy with a sketchbook and a pencil.

Her paintings are deep, with rich colors. Her subjects are ageless and wise, with a story to be told by each of those portrayed. “As I paint, I find that colors carry emotions and tell stories. The brush strokes build up textures, conceal or enhance the previous layers, and things start happening under the surface, as if the painting takes on a life of its own,” she said. Her paintings of downtown Spokane and the surrounding areas, bring alive the shapes and textures of the place. 

She was exposed to art in old towns, monasteries and art museums. She went on to Moscow College of Art, earning a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting in 1987. After college, she taught and sold her work at an art club in Moscow for several years. In 1999 Victoria moved to Spokane and worked in the computer graphics industry, doing graphics for games.

“For a while, painting was put on the back burner, but I always knew that one day I had to go back to oils. Painting is an obsession,” she said, “It’s like a chronic disease … never goes away.” Victoria left the computer graphics industry and dedicated herself to full time painting in 2008.

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Robert Grimes

Robert is known throughout the Northwest for his intricate, three-dimensional “paintings on carved wood” that are designed to hang on the wall and take on the aesthetic qualities of both oil painting and sculpture.

Born and raised in Colorado, Robert Grimes graduated from Indiana University in 1967 with an MFA in sculpture. Since then he has worked as an instructor, a designer, a jeweler, and an illustrator, and always as an active fine artist.

“I always thought if I hadn’t become an artist I would have been an archaeologist,” Grimes explains. “But since I don’t have the time or resources to find these old things, I create them myself. A lot of what you see here comes from the archaeophile in me.”

Ancient patterns borrowed from everyone from the Greeks to the Haida emerge in his recent pieces and the fact that they spring forth from once-living wood adds another dimension, suggesting that the object is at once primitive and yet elaborate.

While there is a sense of storytelling taking place, the characters are only vaguely familiar and even the artist himself isn’t sure while carving where the piece is going or how it might end up. He’s comfortable with both his intuitive process and the ambiguity of knowing nothing for certain: “At times being ‘lost’ can be more exciting than having a complete understanding of something. Working my way through chaos has its merits. A kind of “game” if you will, providing delight in the discovery of new structures and experiences out of the disorder.”