
Spotlight Artist
Merrilee H. Challiss
South
Artist Statement
All of my work is about nature. I paint my mind’s tableaux of
mostly imagined realms to depict how I see the connections
between natural and invisible worlds. I feel and see all natural
systems, Man, Animal, and Spirit, constantly overlapping and
coexisting on conscious and unconscious planes. In my paintings,
I layer and overlap images, expressing my internal conflict with
order and chaos and depicting a world I feel to be out of balance,
while questioning where I myself might be situated in that same
spectrum. Just as I have learned most of my life’s lessons to date
obliquely, so too have the images come to me—from the edges,
the margins, into the center. I locate myself (and my role as artist)
in the liminal realms, with shamanism, where the spirit and the
unconscious trump our waking reality.
Artist's Additional works
Works shared by the artist outside of their featured New American Paintings selections


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