Chronicles
First Etching
First Image Cover
Lover
First Etching
Artistic breakthroughs come from many places. Ways of channeling creative energy arise from a myriad of influences, which vary for every person. Many times, it can be difficult for an artist to determine which way to go to develop an idea. Some ideas seem to emerge completely on their own, almost as if artists were following something outside themselves. Ideas can take on a life of their own. For artists working and discovering their creative paths, others’ work and methods can be instrumental in developing a personal methodology, especially in the media of printmaking, which can seem prohibitively technical.
Western Garden
The Western Garden suite reflects this landscape, of abuse, ownership, more abuse, profit and toxic waste. It was the landscape I had lived in and inherited. A landscape that does not support community, society, or life. It is a huge industrial pile of rubble, a society that profited and left these immense spaces behind, empty, and unusable. Yet retaining a sculptural magnificence, and intimidating beauty. Like Ginsberg’s Sunflower Sutra there in the shadow of the industrial waste dump is beauty.
Bad Ditch 3 24x18 Etching 1980
Western Garden
Dark Woods
Dark Woods
Dark Woods is roughly based on the first chapters of Dante’s Inferno in which Dante is lost in a dangerous dark forest moving without direction in fear and terror. The Kinvad Bridge was based on the myth of a bridge in the Quran. In this story, a soul tries to cross to get to Jannah and the bridge narrows to the thinness of a razor then shakes the pilgrims off into the abyss.
Dark Woods #13
Lucky Dragon
Lucky Dragon
Only one impression of each state exists. The plate was worked for over 70 days, producing 70 unique impressions. The original 70 impressions were edited to the 36 images exhibited at the Nelson Atkins Museum in 1985.
Lucky Dragon Download or View Free PDF
Rules & Facts
I have found over the decades that for me image making is the discovery of pictorial possibilities that show themselves as I spend time working on the image. I do not have a preconceived solution for the image. Yes, I have a direction and knowledge of what I want and how to move towards it. The importance of geometry and architectural linear forms are underlying forces in the development of many of my images. But I do not have a picture of the finished product in my mind or drawn out on paper. My process is much more fluid, based in chance, working, physical change and recognition of possibilities.
Rules & Facts Download or View Free PDF
Luxemburg Wallenberg
Rosa Luxemburg & Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg and selected art by Hugh Merrill
”After the Rosa Exhibition I wanted to continue this process and became aware of the story of the Swedish Architect who tried to save Hungarian Jews form deportation to the death camps at the closing of WWII. I applied the same process to the Raoul Wallenberg suite of etchings. These prints were also printed in sets of three images from each state of the etching plate then the plate was changed and again the images seemed to appear mystically form the depths of the metal printing surface.” Hugh Merrill
Kenealy
Kenealy
Kenealy: Drawing and Print Cycle, 2021
The story of my time, my generation’s moment on stage, always returns to our collective relationship to nature, the profound changes and loss of harmony. I grew up individuated in this world prior to understanding it. Without conscious intent, this became the subject of my work beginning in 1972 with the Western Garden series of etchings. The disharmony of humans to nature has not only made an ecological impact, leading to the mass extinction of many species, climate change, and the vast economic inequity that is our world’s capitalist culture, but this external reality also affects our internal realities. The involuntary poverty of the soul, our inner life, and our inability to find harmony, peace, love, and compassion while competitively participating in the drive to succeed in mainstream cultural economics. Our creation of a toxic external environment polluted with sexual exploitation and violence, lies and hate, and economies of theft and greed is mirrored in our unbalanced internal worlds. Without candid realization, we live our lives in this reality, so it often comes to the fore in creative expression. Often our creative expressions mirror the unbalanced world we travel through. When asked what my work is about, I often shrug and say, “Drawing.” The reality is too much to consider in mere conversation.