A prolific and established artist, Colin Merrin is originally from East London and moved to the south coast in 2007, living in Lewes and Brighton before moving to Southsea, Portsmouth in 2013. He was a successful landscape painter for many years before making the decision to radically change his work in 2016 as a response to the general zeitgeist. His drawings and paintings rely on a process that utilises immediacy and intuition, using a range of different media and techniques. The work is unplanned and distinctly figurative. Clearly reflecting an interest in Dada and German expressionism along with pop art and comic illustration, his style is graphic, whimsical and often political. Collage and text are worked into and around the imagery, commenting on issues concerning both the human condition and historical events while questioning the idea of meaning as a fixed and objective phenomenon. Layers of drawing, painting and collage are built up over time and obscured with half hidden references to current events and human behaviour. Found poetry adds to the narrative, a cacophony of figuration and abstraction in usually urban settings, yet reveal a sense of the absurd, providing a rich seam of ideas and associations with recent and past history alongside commentary on aspects of human psychology.
