About the Artist
Self-portrait of artist D.A. Merrick (pastel and charcoal)
About the Artist, From the Artist
Hello and welcome to my art store!
I go by Alex, first and foremost, so feel free to call me that. D.A. Merrick is just my signature. I don’t expect “Mr Merrick” or anything like that.
I grew up in a small residential area in California, and although I travelled the world and frequently visited cities in California, I am very much a small town person. That being said, I’m not small-minded. I am motivated by ideas that are new to me and open to ones that compete with my own. I owe some of that to my exposure to foreign cultures, but also largely to my education in philosophy.
I have an Associates degree in philosophy from American River College, and am considering transferring to UC Davis for studio art and philosophy. I would like to get an MFA and PhD, specializing in pastel painting and metaphysics, ethics, and logic. My hope is to make a living selling my art and researching, possibly while teaching or holding another job in which I’d be able to use both of my passions.
My art is often philosophical. I am concerned with problems of evil, the nature of reality, meaning and function, or anything really; and often I reflect on my own philosophy. Sometimes I treat art as a premise with which one can arrive at many conclusions I haven’t consider, but they come from what I believe, typically. I don’t want to push my ideas onto the viewer, but I want to make something that I believe in, personally.
That being said, I also use art as a means to express my emotions, my psyche, my struggles, my love, my hate. It is a place where I can be serious, a place where I can be silly; a place where I can make sense, and a place where I can let sense unravel. I don’t know what art is to me completely. I think, “It’s where I do philosophy,” and then find that “Well I also just paint to paint.” Whenever I decide what art is to me, I find a counter example. Perhaps that’s why my art changes so much. Art, for me, is like mercury: constantly moving when I move, always changing. What I do know is that it’s important to me, and that I wouldn’t survive mentally without it.
- Alex