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To Daniel Merriam imagery is reality By Michele Kayal
Visiting Daniel Merriam's half-finished studio is like stumbling into one of his paintings: Pieces shift and move, and disparate images twist and collide as forklifts and tractors haul Sheetrock and trees, all within the frame of a sturdy Victorian house, where the artist himself sits, serenely, among the mayhem.
It's a few days after his 40th birthday when I visit Merriam's magnificent Maui property. Amid the burned-out tiki torches, spent beer bottles and disheveled friends still strewn about, the artist says he is ready for the future. "There's a kind of branding that career artists have to use to get ahead in the world," he says. "I've done that already."
This studio-literally, Merriam's dream-will be the place where he says his work will begin to take a new direction. He sees the elaborate compound as a 3-D expression of his imagination, a magical space that will capture the life of his paintings and lure people into their fantastic world. It is his latest work of art and the symbol of a reinterpreted vision that is leading him to new scales, techniques and media in the hopes of reaching a larger public. "My paintings are kind of imaginary worlds that would be ideally 3-D," says the artist, who designed the Gothic Revival structures being built on his property using the architectural skills he learned as a child working in his family's construction business. "It's been my dream for years to create these things physically. That doesn't mean just creating a house, but the imagery within the pieces on a larger, more interactive scale."
In Merriam's watercolors, drowsy moonfaces, Victorian houses and the matic repetition create a childlike whimsy layered with meaning. The studio captures those same elements: the Victorian structures ringed by mango and banana trees and a triangle-shaped pool create a fairyland feel. Meaning will be layered in the footbridge he's constructing between the studio and the guest house -a literal and figurative connection between artist and audience. Someday, Merriam says, he will stud his property with hidden replicas of the studio in birdhouse, dollhouse and playhouse sizes, just like the multiple houses tucked away in his paintings.
The childlike themes that dominate his work are not a mistake. "Did he tell you about his childhood?" a leftover party friend named Mitch jokes on his way out to the beach. But it's hardly a joke. Fair and soft-spoken, and the fourth of seven children, the self-taught artist discovered at an early age that he could communicate through drawing and other people would respond. His creativity fed on Mother Goose and Treasure IsLand,he says, with inspiration from great American illustrators like Norman Rockwell and, especially, Maxfield Parrish. As children, Merriam and his siblings entertained themselves by making up games in the rural Maine woods where they grew up. On rainy days they drew their imaginings on cut-up grocery bags-lots of dinosaurs, dragons and, of course, monsters. His older brother made sure Merriam believed those monsters lurked under the bed, and today, Merriam says, the fear inherent in childhood mixes with the joy of those Maine woods to give much of his work a Peter-Pan-meets-Hieronymus Bosch quality.
Light and dark, playful and scary, whimsical and macabre mingle in pieces like "A World Apart," where a mystical bee-butterfly creature hovers as tree roots ominously twine their way, like snakes, into the picture. In "Before High Heaven," chubby cherubs scratch each other's eyes out over the burned-out ruins of a city, and in "Bubble Street," a tree seems to scream against a background of bubbles and pastel colors. "We all have it," Merriam says when asked about his dark side. "The dark and the light create a balance. Celebrating that dark side can give you a nice contrast. It's like a roller coaster ride: The fear is part of the excitement."
Merriam likes to think of his work as "fantastic" rather than "fantasy art," a term he feels is reserved for "the kind of thing they put on romance novel covers." He's been called a "contemporary surrealist," but plain old "surrealist" suits him just fine. "Surrealism is a mindset rather than a movement in art," he says. "It evolves from dreams. And the ability to illustrate those ideas is a talent that comes up once in a while in our society. It's not taught or inspired by an art school. It can be inspired by seeing other art of its kind, but it's more like a personality type."
Whatever his work might be labeled, Merriam is already trying to redefine it. In addition to building the studio, he has made a series of 9-foot-tall unique prints that are digitally recomposed and hand-embellished. Using digital technology this way is a different avenue for him, and the work is part of a new San Francisco jazz club, which will integrate visual art with live performance. "A lot of people see my work and they don't get inside it," he explains. "So I'm reaching out to them."
The paintings are just one example of his new, more interactive endeavors, but Merriam says to look out for larger work in larger numbers, more works on canvas, more saturated colors and just about anything that will communicate to people in a world where he says media overload and commercialism have altered the marketing and viewing of art. Merriam says he's always known there would be a time for such reaching out, and that time is now. "And it's not because I've turned 40," he says wryly. "It's the way the world is."
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