Andrew Grum Carr

Andrew Grum Carr is a Twin Cities artist. His work searches out quiet and restful places in the neighborhood: from an arrangement of leaves at the Como Conservatory to the unlikely dignity in an Ayd Mill overpass. Andrew works primarily in watercolor, a medium he loves for its rhythm: for the necessary wait time between washes, and the slow, methodical thinking it encourages. Growing up in Merriam Park, Andrew took classes at the St. Paul Art Academy from a young age. He eventually became an instructor at the school, where he continues to teach.

Artist Statement:

Art first found me by way of illustration: dogs driving cars, bubbles from a deep sea diver, Jeremy Fisher on his lily pad in the rain. Though my older brother learned to read books early, I spent a long time with my eyes fixed to the pictures, reciting the words from memory. In that sense the artwork wasn’t really illustrating the stories, but the other way around; words described pictures.

During long homeschool afternoons, I remember taking books down from the shelf and sitting alone on the couch to page through photographs of the moon landing, or Degas’ dancers, or an enormous red hardcover of Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. I remember settling into a unique silence with those books. The pile of laundry next to me, waiting to be folded; the patch of prismatic light on the carpet, brightening and fading as clouds moved by outside; the two pen drawings of Scottish castles on the wall over my head—all provided me with an unobtrusive sense of wellbeing.

I found that same peaceful silence in the evening classes at the St. Paul Art academy, where adults sat, peering through thick glasses, selecting long-handled brushes from tackle boxes. Committed, serious, unpretentious. It’s that same silence I’m looking for when I go out to sketch, the silence I’m pursuing when I sit down with my watercolors—and the silence which I hope can be heard in my work.