GALLERY ARTIST BETTY MERKEN INCLUDED IN “NOW ON VIEW”, AN EXHIBITION OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS SPANNING 500 YEARS AT PORTLAND ART MUSEUM
“Now on View” celebrates extraordinary works on paper created within the past 500 years, none of which have ever been on view at the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon. Curated by Mary Weaver Chapin, Phd., Curator of Prints and Drawings, “Now on View” highlights 58 out of the more than 1100 works on paper which have entered the Portland Art Museum’s collection since 2009 (the year the Museum last devoted an exhibition to recent acquisitions of works on paper).
The impressive body of work featured in “Now on View” encompasses a broad variety of media, including woodcuts, engravings, etchings, mezzotints, lithographs, screen prints, drawings, and “Couplet”, the painterly monotype below by Betty Merken. This excellent exhibition features old master prints, nineteenth-century French and Belgian Prints with stunning examples from the invention of lithography, the etching revival, the color revolution of the 1890’s and contemporary art. Other contemporary artists in the exhibition include Magdalena Abakanowicz, Willie Cole, Sam Francis, Sol Lewitt, Pat Steir, Lisa Yuskavage and Martin Puryear.
The exhibition opened on August 8 and will run through December 13, 2015.
Betty Merken is celebrated for her painterly monotypes and for her perceptive and compelling use of color. She is especially intrigued by the many ways in which her studio practices of painting, printmaking, and assemblage can come together to create one of a kind works which push the boundaries of conventional printmaking.