Daniel Merriam

Daniel Merriam is a highly regarded contemporary surrealist and is best known for his dry brush technique and gloriously imaginative style. Born in 1963 in York, Maine, Daniel Merriam grew up in Naples, Maine, a rural town in central Maine. One of seven children in a creative, artistic family, he taught himself to paint at a very young age age and used his art as a method of reflective play throughout his childhood.^[1]

Biography

Merriam studied mechanical and architectural design at Central Maine Vocational Technical Institute. While still in school, he applied his dimensional skills and passion for architecture in the family’s design and construction business.

He then turned his talents into the commercial art field, working as an architectural and commercial illustrator for a number of multi-national corporations. Merriam’s illustrations have won numerous awards, including several first-place Broderson Awards and the first-place New England Scholastics Press Association Award (for editorial cartooning.)

In 1987 he shifted his focus solely to fine art and had his first solo exhibition at Abacus Gallery in Maine. In the same year, the artist received an Honorary Masters of Humane Letters from the University of New England in recognition of the potential social contribution of his work. Since that time, Merriam has had over one hundred exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

In 1998, selections from a decade of the artist’s work were published in The Art of Daniel Merriam: The Impetus of Dreams. Merriam’s second catalogue reisonné The Art of Daniel Merriam: The Eye of a Dreamer was released in October 2007. Both catalogues reisonné were inducted into the permanent archives of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Illustration, and the Peninsular Museum of Art. The artist's latest volume Taking Reality by Surprise was published in 2010.

Merriam has produced paintings for the covers of books by Paula Volsky and Neal Barrett Jr. published by Bantam Books, 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 (Portland, ME); KEYT (Santa Barbara, CA); KUSI News (San Diego, CA); Sedona Now (Sedona, AZ); 7days News (Dubai, UAE); France 3 Quercy-Rouergue (Rodez, France). He has been the subject of feature articles in numerous national and international publications, such as Art & Antiques, Gulf Connoisseur, IN New York, New Art International, Realms of Fantasy, The World & I, U.S. Art, Watercolor Magic. Merriam’s work is included in the public collections of The Riverside Museum of Art, CA; Merrill Lynch, CA; The Gesundheit! Institute, VA; the Manhattan Club, NY, among others.

References

1. ^ Merriam, Daniel (2005). "Daniel Merriam" (in English) (HTML). Daniel Merriam's Homepage. http://www.danielmerriam.com/index.php. Retrieved 2006-06-10. 

Further reading

• Gratusse, Delphine. D. Merriam Conte Ses Toiles au Château de Belcastel. Centre Presse, August 11, 2009.
• N.F.. L’Artiste Qui Hante le Château. La Depeche, August 9, 2009.
• Routhe, Philippe. Daniel Merriam, Maître du Réalism Imaginaire. Midi Libre, August 2, 2009.
• Narayan, Meena. Flights of Fantasy. Gulf Connoisseur, Anniversary Issue, April/May, 2009.
• Haber, Karen. Freedom Starts in the Mind. Realms of Fantasy, February 2009.
• El-Gamal, Dina. Tangible Imaginables. Talise, January-February 2009, Issue 5.
• Rossi, Carrie. Frames of Reference. In New York Magazine, January 2009.
• Gardner, Nadia. Quick Chat: Daniel Merriam. OK! Middle East, December 11, 2008, Issue 200.
• Chan, Erin Szeto. Dream World. In New York Magazine, December 2007.
• Kayal, Michele. His Own Fantasia. Art & Antiques, December 2003.
• Abbott, Ann Emmert. What Kind of Creative Are You? Watercolor Magic, June 2001.
• Ditchoff, Pamela. Daniel Merriam. Ego Magazine, premier issue 2000.
• Mendenhall, Lauri. Unexpected Puppeteers. Coast Magazine, November 1999.
• Fallon, Daniel. Into the Depth of Surrealism. Watercolor Magic, Spring 1999.
• Sedley, Jeremy. Daniel Merriam. New Art International, Volume IV, 1998-1999.
• Grenier, Cynthia. Daniel Merriam: Visual Thought. The World & I, November 1995.

Catalogues raisonné

• Taking Reality by Surprise. San Francisco: Monarch Editions, Inc., 2010. ISBN 978-0-9797157-1-6
• The Art of Daniel Merriam: The Eye of a Dreamer, 1997-2007. San Francisco: Monarch Editions, Inc., 2007. ISBN 978-0-9797157-0-9
• The Art of Daniel Merriam: The Impetus of Dreams, 1988-1997. San Francisco: Monarch Editions, Inc., 1998. ISBN 0-9658347-0-0

External links

• Daniel Merriam's Home Page
• [1]

Persondata
Name	Merriam, Daniel
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Date of birth	1963
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death