Drawn From Nature

Norman Kolpas

Brian Grimm's painterly oils of western wildlife derive from a lifelong pursuit of artistic excellence

BORN TO THIS LAND, OIL, 24 X 36

Excitement buzzed through the first grade at Elgin Elementary School in little Elgin, TX, 25 miles east of Austin. Pencils in hand, the best artists in the class huddled over their desks, intent on rendering the most realistic interpretations possible of a photo their teacher had posted on the wall.

“It was a big steamship. The Titanic, I think,” recalls Brian Grimm almost three and a half decades later. In this art competition, he was locked in battle with his closest friend, Raymond, “the best artist in the class” by Grimm’s own admission. “I just marveled at his pencil drawings. I knew I had to do a really great job to beat him,” he says. “Raymond ended up winning, which I kind of knew would happen.”

Grimm took his defeat with a maturity far beyond his years. “Being that I lost, I knew I had to keep doing better,” he says. “So all through school I would draw anything and everything. I would copy photos from magazines. I would buy art books and try to duplicate in pencil what I saw. I was fascinated that a human hand could create something beautiful with such a simple tool.”

That kind of humble, single-minded dedication to honing his skills and improving his art has served Grimm well. Today, at the age of 39, he enjoys a growing reputation as one of the nation’s most accomplished wildlife artists, creating hauntingly lifelike images in oil of animals surrounded by the beauty of their natural habitats.

Nature subjects enthralled him from his earliest days. “Growing up on a fifty-acre farm, I was wandering in the woods as far back as I can remember,” he says. “Our five dogs would come along with me, and we’d have a day of it. We saw mostly rabbits, which the dogs loved to chase, and also a lot of snakes, raccoons, possums, skunks, and an occasional white-tailed deer.”

Back in the classroom, Grimm continued to excel in art, though materials were limited in the local public school system. “We didn’t have the funds for a lot of paints,” he says, “so everything was pretty focused on drawing. I mainly worked with a regular number-two pencil.”

His art teacher at Elgin High, Dr. John Oliver, recognized Grimm’s singular talent and strived to foster it along with the interests of his other students. “Around the 11th grade, he went out and bought us a big watercolor pad and some watercolors, so we could start dabbling in another medium,” says Grimm. Oliver also encouraged him to enter a drawing in a students’ competition connected with the annual Artists Autumn Harvest in Austin, the largest indoor art show in central Texas.

“I got a ribbon for participating, but I didn’t place in the competition,” says Grimm. Once again, the young artist took it all in stride. “I saw the quality of work a lot of the students had done, which made me want to get even better.”

SEPTEMBER SUNRISE, OIL, 24 X 36

The quiet determination that saw Grimm through this minor defeat also helped him through a major personal tragedy. During his sophomore year of high school, his dad died of cancer. “That was a numbing time,” he says, words still coming with difficulty when he talks about the loss. “As the baby of six children, with all the others having already grown up and left the farm, I felt some responsibility to try to stay close by to help.”

After high school, he enrolled for a two-year degree in commercial art at Austin Community College. Afterward, instead of pursuing a bachelor’s degree, he “settled into work mode,” designing and drawing for a sign company in Austin, work he later developed into a successful freelance career. “I specialized in calligraphy and hand lettering,” he says. “I really loved the precision of it, and the feeling of freedom I had using my hands to create.”

Human hands, however, were becoming less and less necessary in the graphic design business in the 1990s, as computer programs did more and more of the work. “I started realizing that I didn’t want to press buttons to create art,” Grimm says.

Fortunately, one of his customers, a single mom named Valisa, gave him just the encouragement he needed. He shared with her his desire to tackle something more ambitious than signs and logos. “She gave me a kick in the pants to start painting and get serious about my work,” he recalls. “Serious” hardly begins to describe the dedication Grimm brought to this pursuit.