Grant Drumheller is more interested in light and gesture than narrative, he takes liberties with his approach to figures constructing them in a light infused composition seen from a bird’s eye view. He began making still life paintings of groups of toy animals lying on the floor in his studio, like big migrations. Prior to that, he spent some time in Rome filming from the 4th floor window of his hotel room all the activity in front of the Pantheon.The idea of painting that view also came from painting some of the large ruins in Rome with the inevitably small figures next to them.
Drumheller earned his BFA (1976) and Master of Fine Arts (1978) degrees cum laude from Boston University. He also studied with Philip Guston, James Weeks and Reed Kay. Drumheller has taught at Boston University, the Art Institute of Boston and is currently Professor of Art at the University of New Hampshire. He has been the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Grant in Painting to Italy. He has also been the recipient of a Blanche Colman Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Fellowship, a New England Foundation for the Arts Grant and a grant from the Pollock- Krasner Foundation.