“Griswold’s work is exceptional because of the way it unites strong light and contrasting values with rich surface texture…..she is successful because she has a clear plan in mind and paints quickly without overworking the canvas”
“In most of her architectural paintings, the basic geometry of a building—usually a section rather than the whole, placed parallel to the picture plane with few, if any, perspective angles—forms the abstract structure. The apparent simplicity of the format belies a subtle, complex, and carefully balanced design”
– Eunice Agar, American Artist May 1993
“Griswold documents the play of light and shadow and reflectivity across the solid presentness of her chosen subjects. She is a painter of the overlooked scene, of the offbeat detail, of the teakettles and irons and the sun-pouringthrough-kitchen-window actuality of daily life.”
“Joan Griswold delivers her colorful monologue with poetic economy. Her value to us is that she is looking at our world now, not only to document and report her findings, but by the generosity of her eye and her love of painting to celebrate the romance of seeing anything at all.”
– Geoffrey Young, The Chatham Courier July 1990
“I have often wanted to inhabit the paintings of Joan Griswold……….It takes generations of time, paint peeling from mullions, many lives passing through certain corridors, to shed the right light on a wall. Griswold conveys this feeling of warmth without getting too pretty or sentimental.”
“The feelings these paintings evoke are filled with the calm embrace of longing. They invite you to partake in that necessary break from outward motion. They hold you still.”
– Laura Chester, The Women’s Times September 1994
“….light is Griswold’s main subject. Her paintings seem to have been soaked in it. Ordinary storefronts and rooms breathe with the rhythms of light and shadow. And with it every surface is sensuously and lovingly revealed, like a voluptuous body draped in sheer, soft fabric.”
“We see the effects of humans: the architecture itself, a bed, dishes in a sink, paintings in a studio. But these exist not for their particular associations, but mostly as devices for revealing the descriptive and evocative powers of light.”
“The paintings are simply there, quiet, even-toned, rather humble. They calm rather than excite. They tap graciously at our sensibilities; they do not disturb. But this evenness is their power. They grant equal value to opposites: light and dark, open and closed, smooth and rough, sensual and metaphysical. There is a message there.”
– Rosemary Starace, The Artful Mind October 1996
“The painter is pitch-perfect and never more so than in her study of a bedside lamp casting a golden glow over the patterns on a wallpaper and a quilt.
Part of the secret of Ms. Griswold’s success is her way of scattering brushstrokes on a ground primed with a reddish hue. The better part, however, comes out of her feeling for nuances of color.”
– Vivien Raynor, New York Times, August 20, 1995
“an accomplished painter who can evoke either a lively or intimate sense of place at will”
“ your interior paintings are like imprints of the people who live there but aren’t present…….they make me think about the constant passage of time, because we won’t always be here in our comfortable surroundings”
– Anna Clune, The Artful Mind June 1999
“Brush with Experience”
– Sheryl Lechner, Berkshire Living September 2008
“See the Crescent City in a New Light”
– CJ Lotz, Garden and Gun March 2017