Mark Ezra Merrill
As an Artist, I look for what I cannot always see. I am interested in any available insight, as seen through an internal yet interpersonal individuality. I seek to understand intuition's influence on perception; how precepts of integrity, value, and meaning are in turn influenced by an emerging bio-political, techno-ecological landscape.
As a Painter, I want to challenge my perception. What can be observed can also be manipulated. What is un-known sometimes becomes known, just as what has already been seen is often forgotten. Uncertainty is timeless and resolute. The most puerile act of the painter is an action of both seeing and remembering. My process is deeply dependent on the sublimation of this value, this expanding or contracting of uncertainty.
As an American, I hope to refine my critical awareness. Our Nation State is set on edge by the continual threat of cultural uncertainty. Our lives, night after night, day after day, are devalued by a carefully commercialized and marketed identity of image, product, and entertainment distracting us from seeing what we could see if we truly wanted to.
Tip Top Studio
Thanksgiving Day November 27, 1997. The studio in the Tip Top bakery, a prominent but dilapidated feature of old downtown White River Junction, is inherited in a somewhat obscure lineage by painter Mark Ezra Merrill. The 1600 sq ft studio, formerly the Muffin Room, includes leaking ceilings and a still dripping lard pipe. The building was purchased and renovated by Matt Bucy in 2000, currently the Tip Top Media & Arts Building, it now serves as a vibrant example of ingenuity foreshadowing the coming renaissance of downtown WRJ.
Early Works
The first series of work begun was less a continuation of previous work begun in San Francisco, and more a conceptual adaptation of my immediate environment. The initial concept was to paint smooth layers of glass-like translucent colour onto medium size square canvases. This idea was interrupted each night, as the train line running Montreal to NYC shook the poor building so to cause flakes of paint, dust and other falling debris to attach to my canvases. Abandoning the daily ritual of trying to remove these tiny flakes and particles with a pair of tweezers that I kept beside my easel, I began to explore more textural themes with a style that ultimately took on a more metaphorical narrative.
1997 - 2000
Constructivist works are allegorical adapting themes of egyptian creationism, "East West Wolf", and mythology of the pagan/christian tradition of the annunciation, crucifixion, resurrection (unfortunately destroyed and un-photographed), and my version of the greek tragedy oedipus invert.
Works from industrial debris and found objects included: wire, metal and electrical conduit, a deconstructed 1971 cadillac limousine, latex molds, wax, polyurethane, ceiling tile, chicken wire, home appliances (deconstructed refrigerator, misc. appliances, etc.), rail road artifacts, gravel, paint, lead paint, lead, unknown objects, misc. objects, tar, tar and aluminum, paper, particle board, orange peelings, sticks and stems, fluids, other fluids, clothing, rubber molds, rubber tubing, molded plastic, industrial molds, misc. plastic, plastic sheets, plastic flowers, plastic masks (clown, devil, wolf), rolodex, time-clock, large intercom speaker box, holographic images on mylar, etc.
2000 - 2001
Renovations begin on the Tip Top building, early spring of 2000. During this period several small pen & ink, water colors, and other small drawings were initiated mostly of Egyptian themes. Work continues on the dark and nightmarish oversized triptych, Annunciation, Crucifixion, Resurrection.
A New Gesturalism
2002 - 2008
Spurts of productivity produce several random series of large loosely connected and stylized paintings. Work continues at the Tip Top in the new Studio 260. After false starts and failed attempts of a more minimalist approach to the constructivist style with works such as "Imbolic" and "Oedipus Invert", somewhat obstinate and apprehensive I return to a more purist idea of painting. Experiments with oil on canvas lead to a more primitive or gestural technique where the brush is abandoned in order to apply the medium in a most direct means possible - usually hands and fingers. While narratives are still explored, a gesturalist style implies a much less linear thematic approach to painting. Several series or styles of gesturalism were initiated during this six year period. Industrial enamel produced deep colors with a smooth glass like surface, drying overnight this medium became highly desirable, yet its use was overwhelming controversial due to it high toxicity basically fuming out the entire building. Eventually, I was asked to discontinue the use of industrial enamels, which I reluctantly complied. Encaustic methods were explored in both the constructionist and gestural works. The last encaustic work, "Trilemma", was completed between 2002-03. "Honey Moon in June", "Truth as Lie", "Intention as Meaning", "True Abstract", "Untitled 21", "Untitled 22", and "Death of Van Gogh in Vermont" represent the last series of work in the Tip Top studio, and are perhaps the most successful examples of a gesturalist style.
Painting and/or Conceptual Art?
Sometime ago one of the local transients passing through White River Junction took a fancy to stopping by and showing me his new pen and ink drawings - small and incredibly detailed mostly floral and flowers meticulously etched on writing cards with colored ball point pen. Things became a bit escalated and he was escorted off the property never to be seen from again.
Shortly before things had got a bit out of control my new friend had brought me the Phaidon 20th Century Art Book as a small thank you gift for scanning some his images and making copies so he could bring them around town and show them to people and then hopefully generate some income. I don't know where things went wrong but they did. My friend set up a card table in the lobby of the building and would sit there for an hour or two each day with a 100 of these crazy renderings. I believe he became agitated with on-lookers and eventually became irate when they would not fulfill their potential of becoming buyers. I had explained to him quite early on that I was a poor artist myself and couldn't afford buying anything other than my tubes of paint. Later on I was flipping through his book and it struck me that the information presented was laid out almost resembling the abbreviated symbols of chemical elements.
Twin Stars
It wasn't long before the need to work beyond the limitations of oil on canvas would produce yet another on-going series of paintings incorporating the idea of an image as symmetrical and asymmetrical vantage points. This particular group of paintings as self referential diptychs explores variables by expanding the theme of the static image as seen through a distillation or distortion of time. The fist in this series is the Twin Stars and concludes with the last painting of the Tip Top era Truth as Lie and Intention as Meaning.
A Long Time Ago Is The Future
Perhaps my seminal work in the vein of Conceptual Art, A Long Time Ago is The Future, delivers one final statement about the controversies and mysteries of our own human nature. The substance of life is a fluidity experienced by a non-linear arrow of time exposing the inner conflicts and the vulnerability of emptiness. And it's now evolve or die at the hands of Evolution and Death and its signal dimension of space.
Fashion
The belief in that - something, anything is out there is useful. "You would have to tie me to a chair using tooth-pics to keep my eyes open" and "an absolutely new hight in television's meaningless depravity" were my first reactions to Bravo's previews of PR - this is the beginning of my fashion career.
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