Refined Power - "Another tradition is just as effectively updated in the lyrical expressionist landscapes of Tom Merwin, who demonstrates a virtuoso fluidity of paint. In such large oils as "Barn Door, Catskills" Merwin deals with casual geometry in a manner which reminds us of no less a master than Richard Diebenkorn. Framed in the rough rectangle of the door, a few whiplash strokes of green evoke the landscape beyond. Merwin is a "painter’s painter" an artist of a type all too often overlooked amid the overblown hype which attends more fashionable crudities. His trump card, however is a boldness of execution which has it’s own refined power."
Claude LeSuer, Artspeak, Vol. 5, #6
"These are well-conceived, well-executed and intriguing paintings."
Ethan Karp, Director, O.K.Harris
"Wonderful colors and compositions. I also very much enjoy the texture of your paintng"
Devrim Kadirbeyoglu. Curator
Damstuhltrager Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Merwin’s "oil paintings combine abstract and literal elements into fertile rectangular kingdoms. The artist uses anything from a foot-wide trowel to wire screen to direct the paint on his colorful and complicated canvases. Oil, and oil alone, is capable of such a variety of nubby textures- it’s almost like clay in it’s malleability - and Merwin throws himself into the colors like a swimmer taking that first plunge into the creek on a hot day.
Viewers may experience that same sense of being suddenly and pleasurably drenched when perusing paintings like the weightily titled “ Prospero’s Equation of the Invisibility of Deer and the Dehumanization of Caliban." Merwin conveys the sheer weight and texture of all that yearns to be said and seen…”
Sarah Seidman, Visual Art Review, Times Argus
4/19/02
"Tom explained that he usually begins painting under the influence of a strong feeling awakened in him by Nature. He is capable of sitting for hours at a time in the woods. Highly sensitive to the ambiance characteristic of the different seasons, this is reflected in his work. Overall, the work has a very sensuous quality with paint applied thick and allowed to drip and splatter freely according to it's own viscous nature. Then strewn throughout the paintings are sensitively drawn details of human figures, waterfalls, bee-hives , crows, rabbits , fish or trees and segments of landscape. There is in these painting evidence of a depth of perception of Nature that is exceptional.
It is my impression that this heightened sensitivity even in regard to materials in the studio has the effect of making these individuals exceptionally sensitive to material reality in general....
Another quality which the artist I met seemed to share was a remarkable capacity to maintain themselves in a life of uncertainty and questioning. Lucio Pozzi maintained quite passionately that it is the artist's search, in and of itself, that validates his or her art and is all that is necessary to validate it. Believing that one's search, was in, itself a significant contribution to the transformation of culture is what marks one as a serious artist...
....Awareness of the spiritual for these artists then is an encounter with the mysterious power of art, a kind of miracle they have witnessed in the arduous and painful process of making art by which each has seen him or herself transformed into an artist. Since the creative impulses which motivates them are as varied and unique as each individual as each individual, their experience and ongoing quest of the spiritual occurs primarily in solitude. The long solitary hours in their studios enable these artists to attain a certain detachment from their environment. The fruit of this detachment seems to have been a radical freedom to explore the promptings of their own artistic natures. These are people who, with full awareness, are undergoing a process of personal transformation. They are doing this in their studios through the process of making art and in response to experiences of deep pain...
These individuals have cultivated a sensitivity to all that is in them and around them, they are reflecting deeply on their experience; they are standing in the mystery and attempting to give expression to it in plastic form. They are preserving in the effort despite being tormented by uncertainty and anguish and they are avoiding grasping at easy formulas or running away. By virtue of their humility and perseverance in the face of mystery of their human experience, I believe these artist are gaining in insights into the spiritual and are growing in gratitude for their whole lives as artists. I found the expressions they gave to this feeling of gratitude were undramatic, simple and deeply moving. There is a kind of wonder evident in their faces when they reflect on how arduous their struggle has been and that they are still engaged in it."
" Contemporary Art and the Spiritual"
