The Bermuda National Gallery (BNG) invites the public to attend a Curator’s Talk on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, Owen’s Merton’s birthday. Dr Charles Zuill, curator of “A Bermuda Interlude: Paintings by Owen Merton”—currently on display in the Ondaatje Wing—will offer an insightful look into the life and career of the New Zealand painter who lived in Bermuda several years. [Reception at 5.30pm, followed by talk at 6:00pm. Tickets $20 for BNG members, $30 for non-members.]
New Zealand watercolourist Owen Merton (1887-1931) arrived in Bermuda in 1921 to paint the landscape, creating a striking Bermuda series which, upon his return to New York in 1923, was exhibited at Gallery Daniel, a gallery known for launching the careers of artists such as Man Ray and Aleksander Archipenko.
Owen Merton’s Bermuda pictures are remarkable for their compressed space and incandescent colour – all aspects of a Modernist aesthetic. Where his earlier paintings were carefully rendered, Merton’s Bermuda brushwork is free and fluid, often with areas of unpainted paper. They mark a confident affinity for capturing the landscape and a distinct point of departure which forever changed the way that he worked.
Dr Charles Zuill is a mixed media artist whose work is mostly experimental and tends to the abstract. In 1969 he received an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Rochester Institute of Technology and in 1984, he earned a PhD in critical studies from New York University.
For many years, he taught studio art, as well as art history, at Bermuda College, as well as other institutions of higher learning. He retired from teaching in 2005, but has continued making art. He also writes art criticism for the Royal Gazette. Zuill is a founding trustee of the Bermuda National Gallery, where he continues to serve on the Collections Committee.
For more information, see https://bng.bm/exhibition/a-bermuda-interlude/
[Shown above: “Sand and Sea, Bermuda.” For more images, see https://bng.bm/exhibition/a-bermuda-interlude/.]
The Bermuda National Gallery (BNG) invites the public to attend a Curator’s Talk on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, Owen’s Merton’s birthday. Dr Charles Zuill, curator of “A Bermuda Interlude: Paintings by Owen Merton”—currently on display in the Ondaatje Wing—will offer an insightful look into the life and career of the New Zealand painter who lived in Bermuda
