Self-taught artist Gregory Van Maanen (b. 1958) began to paint and draw following his return from Vietnam and discharge from the army. A bullet remains lodged in his chest from wounds suffered during the war. He was and continues to be tortured by memories of Vietnam and suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Driven to create, his body of work includes thousands of paintings, 2,400 small drawings, various small sculptures. It is through his art that Van Maanen attempts to exorcise his demons.
In 2006, Gregory Van Maanen made a life decision to move from his Paterson, NJ apartment to upstate New York where, wishing to be closer to nature, he purchased a home. Since then, his works have been acquired and shown in a variety of venues, most significantly at John Michael Kohler Arts Center where all his paintings, drawings and sculptures crated before 2007 reside.
In his essay “Gregory Van Maanen; The Wolf Survives,” Randall Morris writes:
“Gregory Van Maanen’s paintings rediscuss the amulet-possessing powers of pure art. He finds and separates out the occult integrities of symbols long considered cliched and useless and raises them from their impotency. His outlook is tough. His is a feral forgiveness. The veteran has survived his anger, gone through the questions with no answers, and has matured enough to crack through the fear and loathing with answers of his own. The dead have become buried in the kinder shrouds of memories and the bitter mists they died in have begun to dissipate.”