Seeing the Unseen - The Work of Hannah Merrill

Seeing the Unseen

The Work of Hannah Merrill

Hannah Merrill is an American painter, collagist and printmaker who earned her BFA from Manhattanville College in 2009. Having taken her education further at the Aegean Centre for the Fine Arts she has gone on to exhibit internationally, namely in the United States, India and Greece. She now works from her home studio in Leeds, England; recently creating a delicate body of work that regards our spiritual origins, the presence of the female figure and has a strong penchant for environmental conscientiousness.

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“The process of making, for me, is communication…in a way that words can’t”

H.Merrill - March 2022

Any artist that presents their work with the door ajar as to how it is actually made, immediately asks the viewer a question such as this – is its physicality or imagination more relatable? On one hand, you understand that it has been ‘produced’ and some of your thoughts instinctively drift in that direction, whilst on the other you also know that there is something unsaid peering out at you. Hannah Merrill’s delicate but deliberately tactile work immerses you in that space where your mind gets stuck in the middle.

The paintings that make up the “Putting down Roots” series typify Merrill’s interest in the subliminal nature of the unknown. Each of these works has a metaphoric depth in more ways than one; not only can we see the earthy dominance of meandering root systems but we also have - especially in “Phases”, (2022) - the deliberate inclusion of the canvas’s previous life as an object. Such a decision to present the older versions under the paintwork reveals Merrill’s attitude towards zero waste and the notion of an artist’s work being the result of where they have been, what they have lost and more importantly, what they have kept. 

On the subject of ‘the reveal’, the fact that Merrill has emigrated to the UK cannot be understated. Looking at things from an aesthetic point of view, it is fascinating to see how certain elements of ‘19th century subliminal Englishness’ have leaked into her treatment of decidedly more ancient subject matter. The interplay between the ethereal femininity and the harder, graphic quality of the natural world would not look out of place in William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience”- a work that embodies the struggle between man and the greater forces. Merrill’s work could also be described as illustrative and her preference for representing the unrelenting grandiosity of nature in small, page-sized works undoubtedly draws parallels to artists such as Blake. The recurring theme of the tree carries as much weight for her as it did for him, as it encapsulates that seemingly perfect natural form that either lives or dies at humanity’s whim. You could say that she uses the particular nature of lino print and its monochromatic starkness to reflect on our present environmental crisis. More importantly however, these prints are the result of seeing value in discarded material at the time of making. Given that the pages are chosen for their imperfections, each print reveals Merrill’s preoccupation with the dichotomy between how we perceive ugliness and beauty; ink stains, small creases and torn edges make up as much of the composition as the subject.

Comparisons to aspects of Romanticism and the Ideal can be seen in Merrill’s utilisation of the female figure, which appears frequently in the smaller scale pieces. Both “Earthbound” and “Clipped Wings”(2020) feature a woman with her back turned to us, showing an Icarus-like set of feathered wings. This everywoman represents the questions around the female in society, the male gaze and if sexually negative attitudes are either soaring or plummeting to the ground. She is not based on a real person, nor is she an intentional version of the artist herself but the figure does speak of the influence that theatre and performance has had on her recent work.

Having been involved with theatre at a younger age, there is a still a feeling within her collages that relates not only to the world of myth and interpretation but also to symbolically heavy devices - the swan and the moon for example - which have many different connotations for many people. Mythology and theatre have gone hand in hand for centuries and the pairing continues to recycle ancient stories for us to place into our own world. What is interesting about Merrill’s collages is that they utilise mixing and material choice to concentrate the authorless origins and shrouded truths of legend into a series of relatable, miniature backdrops.      

What is certain is that Merrill’s work exemplifies the environment, storytelling and defining the indefinable. Each piece of paper, layer of paint or streak of ink talks of the importance of process within her work and how recycling fits into its overall meaning. Speaking of the future, it will be intriguing to see if one of the three main mediums under discussion here starts to exemplify the gap between reality and imagination more than the others. Will it be a repurposed lino-print? A new painting of an elemental enigma? A return to the everywoman?

Hannah Merrill has the potential to start a body of work that could come to represent modern day mythology – it might even already exist on her studio floor.

CLICK HERE for artist website

All images Copyright of the artist

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Phases oil on canvas 2022

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Earth bound collage/mixed media 2020

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Wolf Moon collage/mixed media 2020

IPA (6.5% concept art)

A day job is one of those stubbornly real aspects that, as an artist, you try to suppress (or at least try not to mention) as much as possible. Such a dirty word spoils the romantic image of an artist existing for their own work and very little else. It does however, remain an image that is pushed on us as students; that having the freedom, time and space to do whatever you want equals success amongst your peers. If you still indeed have a day job, then you are tainted and linger in the realm of failure - simply due to its very existence. It’s certainly the case that you just don’t hear about most of the crap jobs that most noted artists have done because most biographers conveniently forget to include them; perhaps the justification being that such ‘a means to an end’ is irrelevant and purely circumstantial.

Yet this short essay aims to explain that without the day job then “The Dilemma” would probably never have been made. “The Dilemma” is a recent, conceptual work that addresses language, or more specifically, the language of art. It consists of a short statement printed onto a transparent PVC sheet and is hung by two bulldog clips.

Over the last few months, I have been negotiating the ‘sound’ of spoken English with some of my students. At certain points I have found myself broaching the subject of phonetics to illustrate what I mean, the most obvious example being the schwa - a term that is relatively unknown to non- native speakers (or native ones for that matter). In the beginning it was a bit lost on them as to why most British people say “cuppa tea” instead of “cup of tea” but once I had explained that it’s mainly down to laziness (like most languages) they gradually understood it. In the International Phonetic Alphabet the schwa is represented by an upside down ‘e’ and after having drawn it dozens of times on a blackboard, I noticed that this type of text creates a slight conundrum:

If the IPA is supposed to help people with clarifying a language, then why does most of it look like complete nonsense?

There is a case to be made that this alphabet, by its very nature, doesn’t place any real significance in the words but I would argue that normal words can be just as empty. My point here being that the language of art (or what has become ‘International Art English’) is now so up itself that art essays, press releases and catalogues have been littered with portentous, loaded words for some time - the nouns being particularly culpable. I can’t say that I’m blameless in this matter; there have been times when I’ve written ‘entropic spaces’ and ‘non-states’ etc because it seems like you’re not taken seriously if you don’t use IAE. Art is a foggy subject already but it’s still quite fashionable to mystify it even further by using such terms. Just pick out any exhibition leaflet and I guarantee that you will find at least a dozen.

“The Dilemma” is a representation of how language is generally used in the art world and an example of how concept art is one of the more contentious, yet ultimately fascinating, forms of art. So I thought that it would be interesting to display a conceptual idea in IPA – a comment on ‘understandability’ if you will. Here follows a version of the printed text and a recorded translation in English:

ɪn ˈɔːdə tə meɪk ðə saʊndz əv wɜːdz mɔː ˈtænʤəbl, sʌm ˈpiːpl juːz ðɪs ˈmɛθəd. ɪt ˈʤɛnərəli sɜːvz əz ə gaɪd tə prəˌnʌnsɪˈeɪʃən bət ˈlɑːʤli əˈmɪts ðə ˈmiːnɪŋ əv ðə wɜːdz ðəmˈsɛlvz.

djuː tə ðə fækt ðət ðɪs həz biːn ˈrɪtn aʊt əz sʌʧ kri(ː)ˈeɪts ðə ˈfɒləʊɪŋ dɪˈlɛmə:

həz ðɪs kənˈsɛptjʊəl ˈɑːtˌwɜːk biːn ˈrɛndəd ˈiːzɪə tʊ ˌʌndəˈstænd bɪˈkəz ɪt hæz, ɪn ə ˈsɜːtn weɪ, biːn spɛlt aʊt fə juː, ɔː həz ði aɪˈdɪə ˈmɪəli ˈdɪsɪpeɪtɪd ˈɪntə ə ˈsɪəriːz əv ˈlɛtəz ənd ˈsɪmbəlz ðæt, ət fɜːst glɑːns, meɪks ˈvɛri ˈlɪtl sɛns

Once I had changed this into IPA then the idea really did come alive. All the symbols that I recognised from teaching started to appear but because I had never really gone beyond one or two words in isolation before, the text just became an aesthetically pleasing mess.

So therein lies the joke. Artists and collectors use IAE on a daily basis but is really is style over substance, with the writer being the beneficiary of their own words. The back up joke lies with the fact that the statement is printed onto a transparent sheet, so are you rendering yourself invisible by using IAE or revealing yourself to be a fraud...? Maybe both.

If you’d like to find out more about IAE, then here’s a link to an excellent piece, written by A.Rule and D.Levine - produced by Triple Canopy.

 https://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/international_art_english

“The Dilemma” follows another text based piece, the first being “A Coincidentalist Work”, made in tribute to John Baldessari, who remains a huge influence up to this very moment of typing. He was also a teacher (the biographers mention this one quite famously) and in many ways the professorial attitudes of being direct, personable and  ‘performative’ come through well in his text pieces- like the glaring immediacy of a teacher’s hand written note on a homework assignment.

Once I had thought of these ideas for my own work (either through a day job or not) I enjoyed wrestling with how funny they ought to be and furthermore, if conceptual statements like this offer little to the viewer apart from the artist’s own banal sense of self-awareness. I’m intrigued by the way that people sometimes roll their eyes at pieces like this; it signifies a level of understanding that it’s all too easy and breaks the stigma that is often attached to ‘unfathomable’ conceptual art. Sometimes making a point of stating the obvious isn’t such a bad thing.

Bums on seats Part V (goodbye base camp)

It seemed a shame to ruin it really, this satisfyingly square first attempt at a canvas. Last week’s fear over what to do next turned into what I can only describe as a modernistic inertia, as it sat in the studio waiting to be defiled. I had built it up too much; that first gestural mark felt like it had to encapsulate everything that I’ve written about so far: the internet, attention culture, the old theatre crowd, colour theory and the death of interest. All things considered, this reluctance is the down side of having a clear concept in mind, there could never be anything spontaneous or automatic about this work, otherwise it would be a stab in the back- if only with a paintbrush. Yet, working to a plan gives a visual idea some semblance of intention and meaning, especially when something as flippant as colour comes crashing into the room; such a thing can throw you completely. A plan honours the original idea; if something stuck out in your mind as being better than something else in the beginning, then why not try to stay as close to that moment as possible?

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I have said many times before that my work comes from the concept, a contextual version of base camp if you will. The best route, potential hazards and the appropriate equipment all depend on what’s decided over bacon and eggs- how do we get to the top without dying or losing sight of why we’re even here? They say each mountain climb is different and that goes for making art too but to continue this ‘lofty’ analogy would give you altitude sickness sooner or later so let’s get to the point- the interesting thing about “Bums on Seats” (working title) is that it carries on from “First Past the Post” and “Straight from the horse’s ass” in the sense that they are all rigorously planned, painted abstractions that represent a system. I say interesting because producing three examples of similar work in close succession is strange for me- I should be bored with it by now.    

Onto the painting itself- I have started out with the data that relates to January and February. The composition relies on each edge of the canvas serving as the original x axis and the centre as the void that the subjects try to reach into. I’m looking for some balance within the painting so the matching colour spikes (relating to page views, visitors etc) will mirror each other from opposite sides. After conducting some experiments recently I am choosing colours that worked, or at least complimented or blended into each other to form a range of darker tones. As the layers become more complex I hope to see some colours either dominate or fade at first glance (in the same way that visitor hits from earlier this year barely seem relevant to what’s happening now, even if was an impressive statistic at the time).

My knowledge of oil paint is sketchy at best so this piece is being made with gloss medium and acrylics. Using the former would be like going up K2 without any decent boots…