‘The Prince in the Orchard' is on display for a limited period at Lifehouse, Missenden Rd. Its on the first floor near the blood collection area. Hope you'll have time to have a look.
Merrick is working on an orchard painting - it’s watercolours on rice paper and 9 metres long. The rice paper has been sewn to backing cloth to keep it firm. The painting depicts the orchard in changing season.
I started on this painting about 9 years ago with the vague idea of my son Luke in a thoughtful setting with his dog Maggie.
The image of the remains of a building in Armenia from the 11th century took me by surprise when I was given a calendar by Armenian tradespeople living in Australia.
The painting began 17 years ago with a photo taken in the Chinese Gardens at Darling Harbour. Luke picked a costume of a prince in a glorious yellow gown and strolled among the rocks in a dream state.
One of Luke's early memories was seeing a camel sniffing the Great Wall of China. He was 3 years old at the time. In 1993 we lived in Shanghai for 3 months with my wife working in connection with Public Health and myself visiting artists and galleries. I had been interested in the calligraphic styles of the Chinese painters since being a Signwriter in my mid-teens.
Recently, I finished this painting entitled ‘Arlo Valley’. I began this painting in 2003 while I was interested in the relationship between Leonardo DaVinci as a child and his mother, Catarina. My thoughts were around my own mother and how close I was to her. I was a difficult and emotional child with bouts of bad temper, while she was always patient and supportive of my creative endeavours. I exhibited other works about Leonardo and Caterina in the exhibition a Quadrocentro Narrative, however I could not resolve this painting at the time.
I recently rediscovered this very early work from 1974 called ‘Plough’. The texture of the earth was produced by carving into the wood format.
The exhibition title, “Still life in it” is very Merrick Fry. A cheeky pun masking a questioning seriousness. Is there still life in the subjects of these works, or in the works themselves, or in the still life genre? Is still life only part of what is in each of these works? Or is it that when things are no longer/not alive there can nevertheless be life in them for us; that we can vividly recall or call up that life? That there is more to see or to say about these things and so they are alive in that sense?
The still life (spilling into a landscape) has always interested me but I found a new depth of concentration in producing these works.
The process I used came out of a deeply stressful family situation. I worked on one work at a time with a focused discipline - layering the watercolour with numerous glazes over many days and they seemed to reach a point where they may burst at the end if I didn't stop.
September 2020
10 August 2019
This exhibition consists of drawings done in The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney in April & May 2018 and includes assemblages from earlier work which show my fascination with the tree.
