Pnina’s work is the kind that you could live with for years and still discover something new.
Laura Anne Holden, Granirer’s art truly unique, The Tribune, Winnipeg, Manitoba
October 10, 1979


Here are works whose strength, power even, which we are happy to salute. At the same time, Pnina Granirer’s work is typically feminine, with its flexibility, its seductiveness and its imaginative expressivity. This exhibition deserves more than just a casual visit; it deserves to be allowed to lead the viewer towards the mystery of the artistic creation, the reflection of the original creation itself.
When Canadians distinguish themselves by originality
Works by Pnina Granirer at Galerie Artal
Le Nouvel Alsacien, Strasbourg
April 19, 1980


Granirer’s exhibition achieves a success that belies the seeming simplicity of the works. Most effective in the exhibition is the transition one sees in moving around the gallery: the child gives way to the youth, who eventually becomes the middle-aged recluse. The works carry the concept mercifully and with subtleties one does not apprehend until much later.
Jerry Szymanski, Of Women and Black Rose, Chrysalis Gallery, Western Washington University
The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Washington
October 5, 1984


Even though the artist has already exhibited twice before in Strasbourg and thus is not a stranger to us, she still surprised us by this new height which more than justifies the international reputation she has developed for quite a few years now. All the more so, since far from repeating herself, she treats the most original themes with great control and sobriety, suggesting the silence of the space disturbed by the rumbling of the ocean and the piercing cries of the seagulls. And also by an overwhelming sense of poetry.
Jean Christian, New Works by Pnina Granirer, Galerie Aktuaryus 
Les Affiches Moniteur d’Alsace et Lorraine, Strasbourg
February 10, 1987


Over 30 years ago, when Granirer began her career as an artist, she began a process where questioning and self-reflection were important in her work.
There is a definite sense of freedom and joy expressed in these works which convey moments of understanding and enlightenment, mixed with passages of questioning and confusion.
...Granirer’s search for Eden is ageless and endless and will, I am sure, ensure many more years of output from this dedicated artist.
Amir Ali Alibhai, In Search for Eden
ArtFocus
Fall 1995 


... the artist effectively uses the methods of deconstruction, torn fragments, stenciled texts and juxtaposition of incongruous imagery to focus attention on the process of image making itself.
The resulting effect is intended to undermine our confidence in the orthodox and essentially male formulations of both women and nature’s traditionally conceived femininity.
In this exhibition we sense the groping of a keen mind in its search for suitable icons in a world from which the sacred has already been excised.
Archie Graham, The Carved Stones, Smash Gallery, Vancouver, BC
North Shore News, North Vancouver, BC
November 20, 1991 


Pnina Granirer’s most recent work appears neither angst-driven not a vehicle for popular political agendas. Her hard-won artistic feminism (as opposed to ‘feminist art’) is evinced through an emphatic demonstration of a woman’s passionate visual experience, sparkling internal fantasy and daring association.
Ted Lindberg, Granirer: Portrait of an Artist
1998 


Granirer’s recent mixed media works are simpler, less ideological and more exuberant. In these she is mixing it up, tossing it all in the air to see which elements settle on the eye of the beholder. They are frankly celebratory.
Yvonne Owens, The Golden Devil Charm of Pnina Granirer, Richmond Art Gallery
Artichoke Magazine
Spring 1998


It is Pnina Granirer’s facility for visual language that gives us immediate access to her imagination. Originally, intellectual content, stylistic integrity, cultural and artistic influences – these qualities evolve and mature. Command of visual language appears in the early work and remains throughout and when she brings this facility to an exploration of identity or gender politic, it is immediately clear what she is working out. When she shifts the exploration beyond the personal or even cultural, into the visual experience and perception, we are reminded that “seeing” is the result of perceptual habits. And hers is based on a nurtured imagination and artistic discipline. We get a pretty good show.
John Weber, Review of Pnina Granirer: Portrait of an Artist
Books in Canada
May 1999


She’s outspoken, feminist and subversive, but her deepest loyalties are given to what remains most keenly “human” within us in the face of ideology, mythology and technology. Granirer depicts the tender vulnerability of flesh most poignantly in these new drawings and paintings, with an unidealized treatment of anatomical volumes and forms and an expressive, flowing treatment of gesture and line.
Yvonne Owens, A Look at the Local Galleries
Monday Magazine
November, 2000


I have always wondered why the most powerful drawings come from smaller, slighter built, even timid people. Granirer has an ability to connect herself with her subject matter and become a conduit of that energy for her own personal interpretation. What is unique is, she doesn’t lose sight of what information is important to put down. This is openly shared with those who wish to experience, learn and remember.
Paul Constable, Pnina Granirer – The Love Making of Art
Artistsincanada.com
March, 2003


The soft body versus the hard world: perhaps this is the human predicament. Vancouver-based artist Pnina Granirer has been exploring this dichotomy for the past six years. Her exhibit, Synchronicity, at the Zack Gallery in Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre, evokes the complex relationships between humans and their contemporary settings. In particular, Granirer is concerned with technology’s mediation of human perception and expression. Through a range of materials, her imagery features dancers, acknowledging the inherent directness of their discipline.

With a touch of irony, Granirer incipiently worked from photos she had taken at Ballet BC and Kokoro Dance rehearsals. But the resulting works are active and responsive. Her translation of the dynamic presence of dance does not simply rest in the imagery, but in the variety of presentation of the pieces.  Each of her figures, whether on canvas, mylar or paper, has a quality of energy. They leap, stretch, fall, collapse. The images’ defining lines have been erased, etched, scratched, blurred and overlapped the way a body carries the records of life’s (mis) adventures. Her marks are made with values from the most ephemeral chalk marks to light-denying black paint. Granirer is one of Canada’s veteran artists, classically trained in Israel and Europe, with over 40 years of work behind her. Her interest in the human figure is evident throughout her career, but in the past six years she has focused on it exclusively.

“The purpose of these works is to express the synchronicity of these two basic, non-verbal human activities, dance and visual art”, she says in her artist’s statement. Even the viewer’s physical movement affects how one sees the works.  Their presentation includes images of dancers in Plexiglass boxes -a flat drawing in the back of the box and another on a sheet of clear mylar bulging towards the viewer.  As one moves past the box, both figures shift in a simple but animated tableau. Other drawings of dancers revel on clear mylar sheets which hang suspended from the ceiling, removing them from the rigidity of walls and frames. In a solo exhibit at the Yukon Arts Centre, Granirer had installed the clear mylar drawings against the gallery walls.  One was set forward across a corner giving her  the idea to have many of them hung freely in the gallery space. Not only do they shift and interact with each other as the viewer moves, but ambient lighting casts an entire troupe of shadows on the walls around them. During this year’s Chutzpah! Festival in early March, graduating students from Vancouver’s Arts Umbrella dance program added a live, performative element by dancing in and around the drawings. They improvised in direct response to the images. Granirer describes this as the “interaction between the live body and the imaginary one”.

The poems follow the art adroitly, they are illuminated by the visual image, they don’t compete for the same space in our attention, or our senses. One serves the other as the script does an actor.
I wouldn’t change a thing. It is too beautiful a relationship to break up.
George McWhirter, poet and Head of Creative Writing
University of British Columbia


Granirer is another Eve, recreating herself in the image of a more inclusive humanity.
Lucy Lippard, art critic and writer
New York


After seeing and reading Granirer’s THE TRIALS OF EVE,
We will not think of Eve, the fall from grace or the expulsion from the garden in the traditional way again.
Ann Rosenberg, artist, writer and curator


An amazing accomplishment. There is a sense that runs through all the work that you have remained true to yourself without being caught up in the trend of the moment -  or of the decade. There is also a sense of the defining moment, the revelation, the satori which is deeply moving and then is mined for inspiration.
And a sense of incredible work, of devotion to your work which has run through your whole life. This work - and this show - prove what we have known all along, that you are a fabulous artist!
Sometimes it takes a show this extensive, however, to prove it so conclusively.
From the visitor’s book for Celebrating a Life’s Work
Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond BC
Ed Varney, artist, curator, writer
1998