Sunny Caribbee Art Gallery
January 23-February 21, 2002
Features Renowned
Caribbean Painter
KARL MERKLEIN
No Frames |

|
"Making for Soper's
Hole" |
--a new original from Karl Merklein. There's a squall moving in so it's full speed
ahead to Sopers's Hole, West End, Tortola...approaching from
Jost Van Dyke. 24" x 30" . |
|
"Sunny Caribbee Gallery [email, located on Main
Street in Tortola's Road Town] is pleased to announce the opening of a 4 week
showing of original paintings and giclee prints, by one of the Caribbean's most popular
artists, Karl Merklein from January
23rd through February 21st, 2002./fontfamily>
'I spent the first eleven years of my life in Oxford, England, where it was cold, dull
and serious. The day I found out that there were places where the sun shines more than
three days a year, I was off and running. I guess you could say I rebelled'. |
 |
|
Karl's 'running' took him to the Eastern Caribbean 'where no one
takes anything seriously. Lets face it, a place where you could get killed by falling
coconuts is pretty jolly'.
Karl's painting depict life as a perpetual vacation. In the morning you
open your shutters to the sound of the surf, the scent of dewy frangipani and the trilling
of tropical birds. On a narrow street, a vendor sells coconuts from the back of a mini
van, as goats wander by and island dogs stretch out in the sunlight. In the words of one
art critic, 'Merklein creates a world of color and animation that makes you wish you could
slather on the suntan lotion, jump into the painting and join the fun'.
Like his artwork, Karl continues to keep moving. He has lived all over the world, bending
lines and dispensing jolliness with his whimsical view of life. A world where straight
lines, earth tones and temperatures below tropical do not exist.
Karl's work in renowned, and can be found in selective galleries in America and Europe and
Sunny Caribbee Gallery [2001 show]."
"Catching
My Drift"
 |
Karl abstracts bold, Rousseau-like patterns in opening a
"window," or impression, to the imagination.
The aptly named "Catching My Drift" re-captures the exotic
nature of the islands in the familiar age of the jetliner. Folk art
abstraction allows the artist to "break through" the conventional viewpoint--not
into some weird world of alienated art (the
"concrete jungle" of Quito Rymer's songs)--but into an abstract
impressionism of simple wholeness, Caribbean charm and exhilaration. |
|
|