Emilio Mer­lina

Some peo­ple want a Porsche, oth­ers lust for cloth­ing or a large house, per­haps a trip to Paris. Me? What do I dream of own­ing? It’s sim­ple, really. A work from the hands and mind of Emilio Mer­lina. I can spend time thumb­ing through my giant com­pedium of Max Ernst work and then mogate over to the book shelves and pick up another book filled with “the Mas­ters” or grab a port­fo­lio of some other artists but my mind returns to images of Merlina’s work. He proves, to me, that sim­plic­ity con­veys intense detail.

The first image here is titled “For­give Me”.

Sec­ond is a slice of thumb­nail from a piece titled “last news”. This image taken from a much larger work (on left) might seem sim­plis­tic but look at it long enough and you’ll under­stand the del­i­cate bal­ance between too much work and just enough — no heavy hand here. As a some­time ceram­i­cist (for­give me Car­olyn), my clumsy fin­gers could never achieve such per­fec­tion of form. Per­haps I’m drawn to this work because of where I am right now, what with watch­ing Momma die and all.

I couldn’t close her mouth but her eyes, yes… I did close them. Thank you, Emilio, for this death mask, even though you didn’t intend it to be one (or per­haps you did?)

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