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© Leigh Merrill

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Leigh Merrill

Dallas, Texas

Artist Statement

Working primarily with photography, I create digitally collaged photographic and video works that explore the impact of desire, simulation, and perception on our contemporary landscapes. Culling through thousands of individual photographs and videos I make of architecture and landscaping, I digitally assemble these sources to create my work. Some of the images have veracity, but more often, they suggest a visual hyperbole – an embellished scene circulating around a small object or detail. I am continually fascinated with photography's ability to be both evidence of existence - creating an image with seeming veracity - and simultaneously, a system to mediate and construct reality. I use photography as a tool to observe and then digitally combine my photographs to build spaces that do not exist, allowing the creation of images that, through metaphor and illusion, reveal both the desire and simulacrum present around us and within photography itself.

© Leigh Merrill

Leigh Merrill's Portfolio

© Leigh Merrill

Artist Biography

Leigh Merrill is an American Artist born in 1978. Working primarily with photography, Merrill creates digitally collaged photographic and video works that explore our contemporary landscapes and the impact of desire, simulation, and perception on the built environment. Leigh Merrill received her BFA from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM and her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA.

Merrill’s work has been a part of exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad in venues such as the Phoenix Art Museum, the diRosa Art Preserve, The Lawndale Art Center, FotoFest International, the Fries Museum (Netherlands) and the Museum of Texas Tech University. Merrill’s work has been included in online and print publications such as the Washington Post, Afterimage Magazine, Places Journal, Dwell.com, BLDGBLOG blog, the Dallas Morning News, and the Houston Chronicle.

Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Texas Tech University, the University of North Texas Library Print Study Collection, the City of Phoenix, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and various private collections.

Leigh Merrill lives and works in Dallas, Texas where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

leighmerrill.com

© Leigh Merrill

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