In preparation for Gather in the Golden Grain, opening July 30 at Olsen Gallery, Peter Graham is articulating moments of psychological vitality that extend beyond the physical. He explains, “I’sm interested in the sense of physically being in a body and stepping into a space where the body has a more mythic understanding of its presence.” Previously described as a philosophical artist, Graham’ss approach to philosophy is not rooted in critique or theory. Rather, painting itself is the text to which he subscribes. The philosophical undercurrents in his work emerge through intuitive, archaeological, and psychoanalytic processes of both painting and reflection—a space to explore notions of the higher self, or as Graham puts it, “some ancient thing the mind conjures.”His work also draws visual associations with Egyptian funerary art and depictions of the underworld found throughout global art histories. For his forthcoming exhibition at Olsen Gallery, Graham will present large-scale figurative paintings in which he imagines the “shadow-form of his own body projected into newly awakened states of consciousness, ready to witness the first light of a waking dream. (…) I think of golden grain like granules of the sun, or the particles that comprise us, being illuminated. I want to pinpoint the cross-pollination of the things we perceive and observe.” The full article by Josephine Mead is available in Artist Profile magazine, Issue 71. Photography by Elke Meitzel / Artist Profile