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meris drew

presentations
    the rift and the ring
    sphere
    Platform
    two summers
    particle zoo II
    things singing
recent paintings

vessels

works on paper

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    2023
    2022
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about

the rift and the ring
presented at stellarhighway, new york
november 19, 2023 - january 7, 2024

more info

installation



works
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the listeneroil on linen panel50x40"2023Sitting in that same garden one day, I felt the seed of something quiet appear and I tried hard to listen to it. The real soundlessness arrived the following year in the full part of summer. This painting follows the growing memory of the arrival of the seed of the quiet. moment in late frostoil and wax on linen panel50x40"2023Looking into the dry branches and the gnarled icy biota along the bank of the Allegheny, in the heart of winter, strange forms coaxed themselves forward—"Nothing would give up life:Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath." sudden clearingoil and wax on linen panel32x40"2023Spring arrives unnerving as ever. With my eyes still adjusted to the winter palette, I came upon a clearing in the woods, its beautiful color hitting me hard enough to dazzle and hurt. Through the weeks I spent painting this memory and watching the season shift, I was reading letters and accounts of soldiers who lived and died in the trenches in World War 1. In daydreams as I painted, visions of bombardment crisscrossed with visions of the clearing— I felt the space in the woods of my memory like the spaces made from so many blows— and what a strange picture is spring in such a world. pondoil and wax on panel20x16"2023The surface of the pond was green, all leaf litter, algae and spider-bugs. All parts of every tree and the lights beyond swirled together in the picture on the water, dancing in ripples, infinite rings emanating from every form, forever, down to the smallest beyond sight. iceoil on panel20x16"2023Dead things encased in layers of ice, cracks above and below, all along the water’s edge. forest (kilbuck)oil on panel16x20"2023This was painted as frenetic evening light danced across limbs and leaves of trees. It grabs at the moments just before the arrival of dusk finally brought stillness to the forest. the historian's gardenoil on panel16x20"2023In Heidi’s garden in summer heat with the light hanging low at the approach of dusk I stared down the line of trees past the edge of the meadow. The vision was so familiar and so close that I felt it became all seasons and all moments in that place at the same time. gnats appear in the gardenoil and wax on burlap panel18x24"2023There is a garden on Buena Vista Street which is such a perfectly beautiful place that it scares me. This is true in all seasons, but especially in the late fall as remembered in this painting. Colors eat the air that bugs draw their swirling lines through. In the painting, layers are excavated here and there like the dense piles of three seasons' growth and increasing decay. the south appearsoil on panel10x8"2023I moved to coastal North Carolina at the end of this past summer. This was the first painting I made here, sitting on the edge of a lake and feeling the difference in the greens, hot and ancient, a color that doesn’t have to die and get reborn each year but instead just keeps accumulating within itself, dense and different. dream of meadow with asphodelsoil on burlap panel24x18"2023In this dream I made my way to the asphodel field where, in a horrible way, I found it impossible to look at any one flower in particular. Each spot where my eye tried to rest would shift out from under the gaze. Desperation grew and grew until I woke up. pot with memory of greenhouseoil and underglaze on ceramic8x6x6"2023 pot with ringsoil and underglaze on ceramic4x6x6"2023 broken pot Iunderglaze on ceramic and crinoid fossilsdimensions variable2021