Interviewer Elizabeth Yates
Expositor Staff |
Blind ambition
Brantford artist continues painting despite visual impairment
Colin Merriam was an Art Director for many leading advertising agencies until partial vision loss curtailed his ability to continue in that profession. He has recently returned to expressing himself through painting. |
|
"Every picture is a challenge."
Especially considering Merriam's fighting a major handicap for any artist: a vision impairment.
The 70-year-old began having problems with his sight around age 60, while co-running an ad agency in town. Six years later, the retina in his right eye became detached and had to be repaired. But since then, that eye has got progressively "milkier," says Merriam, and can't be treated.
He's had to give up driving and has trouble seeing both near and far. But a magnifying glass enables him to keep painting.
"I hold the magnifier in one hand and my paintbrush in the other."
After a long career as a commercial artist, Merriam returned to his love of painting about five years ago, with encouragement from childhood friend Bob Cooper, who also took up the past-time.
"We went out and bought paints and brushes and canvases -- and here we go.
"I'm glad he got me painting again. It gives me something to do."
A native of Hamilton, Merriam moved to Brantford as a child and, at age 16, started work as a draftsman at the Massey plant. But he was laid off and then moved to Toronto, finding a job at an art studio. Seeing his coworkers there earn better pay if they'd been to art school, he decided to follow suit. Merriam entered the Ontario College of Art in 1956, embarking on "the greatest time of my life.
"I met talented kids from all over the world."
Staying on in Toronto, the graduate worked in art studios and advertising agencies, creating everything from newspaper ads to TV commercials.
The products Merriam helped sell ranged from "cars to beer to soap to brassieres to jewelry." |
|
Consumers of everything from beer to bras have sampled Colin Merriam's creativity.
But few have seen the paintings produced by this former advertising artist, who takes part in his first art exhibition this weekend. Called Art in the Villa, the show features pieces by Brantford's Merriam and from 23 other local artists.
While the exhibition presents a diverse range of styles and subjects, Merriam is also eager for viewers to see just how individual his pieces are: executed in acrylics, they range from a stark, thickly painted portrait of a tree in winter to a landscape glowing with pointillism-type brushwork, from a light-hearted study of chickens in a barn to a moody depiction of a lone hockey player skating off the ice at night.
"I like the different things I can paint," he says in an interview at home in a Brantord cottage near the Grand River. "Most people would say, 'Painting chickens? You're nuts.' But I had fun doing that. |
|
For 10 years, he handled Canadawide advertising for a range of Carling O'Keefe products. The job meant logging thousands of miles in the air. "It was go, go, go all the time. My bag was always packed."
The creative director was offered a position in Calgary, but didn't stay long. "I didn't especially like the West."
In 1982, Merriam came home to Brantford to work at JAN marketing, spending 10 years there before setting up his own agency with partner Nicholas Torrens. At 55, "it was good to go out on my own and say, 'Jeez, I did it: I worked for myself.'"
They landed prime accounts such as the Lynden Park Mall, Kittling Ridge Winery and the Norfolk County Fair -- creating a poster that won a major award.
While his vision was starting to go, the artist's creativity was still vivid, allowing him to dream up ideas to be executed by others. But after 10 years, Torrens was offered another job and Merriam decided to let the business lapse.
"I've had a good life in the ad business," says the retiree, who has been married to wife Jan for 50 years. The couple have four sons, 10 grandchildren and a great-grandson.
With his vision loss worsening, Merriam has no idea how long he'll be able to keep painting. In the meantime, he plans to enter more exhibitions and hopes that people enjoy his pieces at Art in the Villa.
"If people can appreciate the work and the variety, I'll be happy.
"But I don't paint to make money. I paint for me." |
|
