Tim Merry

Tim Merry creates paintings and sculptures with highly worked surfaces, using nontraditional materials. His paintings, inspired by personal events, evoke ancient walls, the natural world, and a range of emotional states.

Merry was born in Bay City, Michigan in 1953. Two years later, he and his family moved to a farm in Vassar, Michigan. Merry has noted that, “Growing up on a farm fundamentally shaped me as a person,” fostering self-reliance, a strong work ethic, and a close relationship with the land. He was encouraged in making art and in finding Native American artifacts in the local Sand Hills. This was the beginning of a receptivity to other cultures that has continued to influence Merry’s work as an artist.

Over a period of seven years, Merry worked his way through college, starting at Delta College and graduating from Western Michigan University with a BFA in 1979. During those years he created a series of site-specific mixed-media sculptures in whose talismanic qualities we can see the origins of his current paintings. His early pieces, influenced by the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as by his instructors, was rooted in Merry’s growing up on Lake Michigan, and the fishing and farm life he experi...

BFA, Western Michigan,1979

2015 Sept-Oct, Cotuit Center for the Arts - Solo Exhibition

2013 Aug-Sept , Raushenberg Gallery, Fort Myers FL

2013 June-July, Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport CT

2013 June, Joyce Goldstein Gallery, NY - Solo Exhibition

2010 December, Galerie d’Orsay, Boston MA - 10th Anniversary Exhibition

2010 October, Work of Art: Next Great Artist / Bravo network. Selected by judges panel for inclusion in final round auditions. Portfolio commentary by judge, Simon dePury (Chairman & Co-founder of Phillips de Pury & Company, one of the largest art auction houses in the world), “this is really remarkable work.”

2003 June, Washington House, Wellesley MA - Solo Exhibition

Saginaw Art Museum, MI - Work added to the museum’s permanent collection.