Pierre Merkl III: Scenes, Schemes, and Genes (Skeins)

Pierre Merkl III Featured at Sanchez Art Center

February 21–March 30,
2014

Three new exhibits will open at
Sanchez Art Center on February 21: Pierre Merkl III with Scenes, Schemes, and Genes (Skeins) brings his unique surrealist
vision to the Main Gallery. Portraits
in West Gallery is a group show from the Art Guild of Pacifica. And in the East
Gallery, Galen Wolf: A Brush with History
offers the history of our coastal area in the artworks of this artist. The

public is invited to a free opening reception for all three shows on Friday,

February 21, from 7 to 9 pm. Music will be provided by Pacifican pianist

Michael Slaughter.

In addition, there are two free lecture
events associated with these exhibits: Shannon Nottestad, Galen Wolf biographer
and the curator for this exhibition of his work, will give a Curator Talk on
Friday, February 28, at 7 pm. This event is part of LitWave, Pacifica’s literary
festival, and will include a book signing and a reading from Wolf’s Legends of the Coastland.

On Sunday, March 30, at 4 pm (the
last day of the exhibits), Main Gallery artist Pierre Merkl III and his exhibit
curator DeWitt Cheng will talk about Merkl’s work. The public is also invited
to attend this free event.

The talented and original painter Pierre Merkl III stands out
from the crowd, even though he may be more likely to picture himself as one of
the crowd in his mesmerizing portraits and “group shots.” His work is
innovative and haunting, though one can’t at first say why, and memorable to
the point of being indelibly imprinted on viewers’ retinas. Mostly known as a
portraitist, he goes well beyond acceptance of that genre as it has typically
been understood. For one series, he set up confrontational portrait sittings,
wherein a subject would sit with as much candor and openness as they could
muster, while Merkl attempted to meet the sitter’s energy with his own probing
inventory of the person as they were in the moment. These “Confrontational
Portraits’ took place within the short time span of two hours, so that the
result was necessarily fresh, even a bit raw. “Pull No Punches” might be the
name of this game.

Pierre Merkl III was born in New
York and has embraced many roles on his path through life. In one incarnation,
he is known as “Mr. Lucky,” a crooner who has performed at Lincoln Center, New
York, as well as at Burning Man in
the Nevada desert. Merkl’s day job is working as a licensed private
investigator, and he has drawn extensively on this background and his
observational skills and experiences in this role to fuel his artwork. It may
therefore not be surprising that some of the made-up, imagined people in his
paintings have the underpinnings of a slightly unsavory reality, such as Spouse Confronting Husband with Infidelity.
Mainly, he attempts to capture moments outside of our comfortable, socially
acceptable world of air-brushed TV-anchor news bytes. He describes his work as “humanesque”
and himself as an “abstract humanist,” whose forte is an “inclusive and
expansive psychological pictorial.” Encounters, conflicts, and otherwise
uncomfortable situations abound in his paintings, complete with sly innuendo
and an ironic view of human nature. And yet there is also tenderness and caring
in his work, which is captured visually in the careful shading and attention to
color. After all, who among us has not felt caught out, on the spot, or caught
up in the swirling emotions of a group dilemma? This is part of our human
plight, and Merkl helps us to not only see this but also to bear it.

The Art Guild’s group exhibit of Portraits provides a perfect
counterpoint and complement to Merkl’s incisive paintings. With the confluence
of these two exhibits featuring portraits and paintings of people in general,
the Sanchez Art Center will offer a panoply of ways of seeing ourselves.

Galen Wolf (1889–1976) is another
individualist whose contributions to our cultural heritage are unique. Wolf was
a writer and storyteller as well as a painter. He was a friend of John Muir and
Jack London, and a true champion of the coastal lands. Galen Wolf: A Brush with History features selections from three
mid-career series of his paintings. The first series presents California

missions that Wolf painted in the mid-1930s. The second major series in Wolf’s

art career centered on scenes from San Mateo County created while Wolf was

employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression.
These paintings show the county’s changing landscape and way of life, including
pieces on Filoli and other Peninsula estates as well as life on the rural
coast. In the third series, which Wolf considered his best work, we see his beautiful
and innovative “mosaic” style. This series includes illustrations for his book Legends of the Coastland, edited by
Shannon Nottestad and published in 2012 by Luna Moon Press. Ms. Nottestad
devoted 10 years to the painstaking research needed to put together this
beautiful book, including working with the artist’s 1976 oral history and his
many collected materials. Her work shines a light on the linkages between our
coastside legends and folk tales, our oral and written histories, and the role
and creative contribution of real-life hero-artist Galen Wolf.

After the February 21 opening
night, the galleries are open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 1 to 5 pm,
through the exhibits’ closing day, March 30. Sanchez Art Center is located at
1220 Linda Mar Blvd., Pacifica, California, about 1.5 miles east of Highway 1
and the Pacific Ocean. For more information, call 650-355-1894 or visit www.sanchezartcenter.org.