Tanya Merrill
"Friends in flight", 2023
Graphite, ink, wax pencil on paper
14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Courtesy of the Artist and 303 Gallery

Selected by Claire Gilman
 

Tanya Merrill’s work invents narratives to examine humanity’s fraught relationship to nature and cultural portrayals of gender and sexuality through her own contemporary lens. Fantastic, consequential, and at times humorous scenes are populated by animals and characters caught amidst moments of introspection, fervor, or mischief. Gesture and movement are punctuated by sketched lines, lending her canvases a sense of effervescence and immediacy. Reinterpreting motifs drawn from throughout art history, Merrill imbues a sense of familiarity to her storytelling as a means to decode 21st century concerns. Symbols and imagery make repeat appearances from one work to the next, building a mythology of personas and environments.

 
Tanya Merrill was born in New York City in 1987. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA from Columbia University. Merrill presented a solo exhibition at 303 Gallery, New York and The Pond Society, Shanghai in 2021, and also a solo exhibition at Half Gallery, New York in 2020. Recent group exhibitions include Blum and Poe, Los Angeles; Gagosian Gallery, New York; and Clearing, New York. Merrill lives and works in New York City.