River
Desert
Birth
Self-portrait as kid
Vietnam 7
Vietnam 6
Vietnam 5
Vietnam 4
Vietnam 3
Vietnam 2
Vietnam 1
Slippery Possibilities (after Sassetta)
Flooding
Blind Dawn
The artist Merel Ellen realizes that to be human at this time, one must embrace the mirror. She does so with an all-consuming courage. Her work shows us what she finds. Almost unfiltered we find ourselves in the nightmare landscape of her interior. She shows us fears, addictions, dependencies, anger and loneliness without any restraint. An analysis of her deepest feelings and tendencies, her uninhibited style of painting puts in perspective that which doesn’t want to be put into perspective.
Her work is psychological without being psychologizing. It is as if to say the deepest fears are only laughable beings in the full light of day.
It is of a brute force. So brutal that beauty arises. She reveals the monsters that haunt us too. She shows us that we too must face them to be human in today’s world. ☞