Mark Ezra Merrill

David Fairbanks Ford introducing MEM to the circuit for his talk on Alchemy, Tarot, and the Periodic Table of Elements in conjunction with Born Free Radicals. Main Street Museum April 1, 2007

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 the emerging experiences of an ever changing bio-political, techno-ecological environment.

A vehicle is a work art - whether it is a shirt, a seat belt, or a word you can't decide how to spell - not that we understand these things or somehow have capabilities of imbuing these objects with a maigickal like life - it is simply because we are these things - internalized or inverted - it is a matter of possession - we are transposed by them - and they by us. Mark E Merrill

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 already has been seen is often forgotten. Uncertainty is timeless and resolute. The most puerile act of the painter is an action of seeing and remembering. My process is deeply dependent on the sublimation of this value, this expanding or contraction of uncertainty.

As an American, I hope to refine my critical awareness. Our Nation State is set on edge by the continual threat culture uncertainty. Our lives, night after night, day after day, are devalued by this particular image, a carefully commercialized and marketed identity of image, product, and entertainment distracting us from seeing what we can see, if we truly wanted to.

Tip Top Studio

Thanksgiving Day November 27, 1997. The studio in the old Tip Top bakery, a prominent but dilapidated feature of downtown White River Junction is inherited, in a somewhat obscure linage, by the young painter Mark Ezra Merrill.

This 1600 sq ft second floor space, formerly the Muffin Room, included a leaking ceiling and a still dripping lard pipe. The building was purchased and renovated by Matt Bucy in 2000, currently known as the Tip Top Media & Arts Building, it serves as a vibrant example of ingenuity and foreshadowing renaissance.