Merrill Wagner
Merrill Wagner moved to New York from the Pacific Northwest in the late 1950s after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College. In the early 1960s, she transitioned to geometric abstraction using large canvases, hard edges and bright contrasting colors. Inspired by Eva Hesse in the late 1960s, Wagner started to experiment with different materials. She explored textures, patterns and the ways different media would sit on top of or repel one another. This experimentation would prove to be an ongoing fascination for the artist. By the 1980s, Wagner was painting on stone, steel and slate, focusing on the surface of the material, the geometric patterns inherent within it, and ordering the painting around its individual marks, blemishes and colors.  Wagner's works are included in official and private national collections including the Bellevue Art Museum in Bellevue, Washington, and the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Washington. She has self published five different books including A Calender (1983), Notes on Paint (1990) and Time and Materials (1995).