NATURE AND NURTURE – Mother/Daughter Artists: The Paintings of Cheryl Griesbach and Claudia Griesbach-Martucci

After working almost 20 years as an illustrator with her husband Stanley Martucci, in 2000 Cheryl Griesbach began creating a body of paintings based on her interests in European 18th and 19th century still-life, botanical, and landscape art. Cheryl’s painting technique was derived from Flemish painting that she had explored as a student at The School of Visual Arts where she is now on the faculty since 1985. Her method includes the manipulation of segments of Northern European paintings and incorporating that imagery in building a new landscape, like a stage. Cheryl has received many awards, including last year’s best in show at the Monmouth Museum’s 38th international juried awards show.

Cheryl’s daughter Claudia, having grown up with both parents as artists, gave her an innate inclination to explore her imagination and develop knowledge of oil painting.  Admitted into The School of Visual Arts, her parents alumni, Claudia in her third year first began to primarily use oil paint as her medium to illustrate the 18th century fairy tale Donkey Skin by Charles Perrault.  Claudia graduated with honors and was then accepted into the Masters Program, Illustration as Visual Essay, with a limited class of 20 students. With her background in Illustration and skills in using oils learned from he mother, all of Claudia’s paintings tell a story. Her end of the year show paintings began to carve out some of the subject matter she wanted to explore, “that behind every exquisite thing that exists there is something tragic” a quote from Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray. Claudia is currently working as a painting assistant to the artist Jeff Koons, while pursuing her own personal work.