Paperwork by Gene Merrit | Curated by Tom Stanley & Paul Matheny

Vault | March 19th — May 16th | Opening Reception: March 19th from 5:30pm — 8:30pm Curated by Tom Stanley and Paul Matheny.

Curator’s Statement:

Paperworks by Gene Merritt (1936-2015) is a small re-introduction of drawings that Merritt had actually called paperwork. Merritt’s work illustrates a common interest between Paul Matheny and Tom Stanley (currently on exhibit in the West Gallery). Merritt was a self-taught artist that Matheny and Stanley encountered and befriended in Rock Hill, SC. Little did they know he would emerge as an internationally reknowned artist of the Outsider genre.

The idea of work was vital to Merritt’s identity. He considered himself an artist-businessman during his roughly 15 years of drawing, in part because he was looked upon as a self-taught artist with no training or artistic influences. Merritt’s drawings have since attracted international attention. Many of his drawings focused on the American popular culture of his time. He suggested that the ideas emerged from his “head,” possessing an amazing memory for details he had seen and heard from movies and television alone. Throughout the 1990s, he drew daily at Watkin’s Grill in downtown Rock Hill. 

In those early Rock Hill years, Matheny and Stanley developed an interest in Merritt’s drawings. They met Merritt at Watkins Grill—at what seemed to be the collective consciousness of a small part of downtown Rock Hill—where Merritt would draw in the morning before the lunch crowd arrived. Paperworks represents a small sample of Merritt’s 1998 portraits, a drawing of an eagle’s claw and feather, and his 1994 portrait of J.F.K.