This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Daniel Merriam paints whimsical and macabre scenes of Victorian houses, cherubs and fantastic animals and streetscenes. The artist finds inspiration for his work from Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell as well as favorite childhood books such as Treasure Island and Mother Goose. Merriam nurtured his creativity as a child playing with his siblings in the Maine woods and drawing all they could imagine-dinosaurs, dragons and monsters when they were kept inside on rainy afternoons.
Source: Art & Antiques, December 2003
www.danielmerriam.com
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Biography from Animazing Gallery:
| Daniel Merriam's paintings are dreams in full color that invite the viewer to join a journey into the imagination, where the worlds of reality and fantasy collide in an explosion of color, shapes and symbolism.
Born in 1963 in York, Maine, Merriam grew up in Naples, a rural town within the vast, quiet spaces of central Maine. One of seven children in a creative, artistic family, he taught himself to paint at a very young age and used his art as a method of reflective play throughout his childhood. He studied mechanical and architectural design at Central Maine Vocational Technical Institute. While still in school, he applied his dimensional skills and passion for architecture to his family’s design and construction business. He then turned his talents to the commercial art field working as an architectural and commercial illustrator for a number of multi-national corporations.
Merriam’s illustrations received numerous awards including several Broderson awards, New England Scholastics Press Association award (for his editorial cartooning), and the University of New England Honorary Masters of Humane Letters in recognition for the potential social contribution of his work.
Yet Merriam’s true passion remained painting the expression of his own inner vision. In 1986 Merriam shifted his focus solely to fine art and later that year had his first solo exhibition at Abacus Gallery in Maine. Since that time, he has had exhibitions throughout the United States. In 1998, Monarch Editions published The Art of Daniel Merriam: The Impetus of Dreams, which captured selections from a decade of the artist’s work. In 2005 the book was inducted into the permanent archives of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Merriam’s work is displayed in many public collections including The Riverside Museum of Art in California, The Gesundheit Institute in Virginia and the Manhattan Club in New York. Merriam has painted covers for books by Paula Volsky and Neal Barrett Jr., as well as for an international literary journal, Mid-American Review. The artist’s work was used for the playbill of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare produced by the Tony® Award-winning McCarter Theatre in New Jersey.
Daniel Merriam has been interviewed on WCSH in Portland, MN, KEYT in Santa Barbara, CA, and KUSI News in San Diego, CA. He has been the subject of feature articles in numerous national publications including The World & I, Art News, Art Business News, Arts & Antiques, and New Art International, among others. |
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