Carts | Archival Pigment Print | 25" x 34" | 2014

Denizens in the Forest | Archival Pigment Print | 23" x 33" | 2014

The Palm Tree | Archival Pigment Print | 23" x 31" | 2014

Artist Statement: My work examines the construction of desire, fiction, and beauty in our urban landscapes. My process begins by making thousands of individual photographs, videos, and audio recordings while exploring a city or neighborhood. In the studio, I then digitally assemble these sources to create photographs and videos of imaginary spaces. Some of these composite images have some veracity, but more often they suggest visual hyperbole—an embellished scene circulating around a small detail or object that fascinated me. These composite images function as a metaphor for the ways in which desire is physically constructed in the landscape.

Leigh Merrill received her BFA from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM and her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Merrill’s work has been a part of exhibitions throughout the United States in venues such as the Phoenix Art Museum, the diRosa Art Preserve, the Lawndale Art Center, and the Tremaine Gallery at the Hotchkiss School. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX), the City of Phoenix (Phoenix, AZ), the California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco, CA), as well as private collections. Leigh Merrill lives and works in Dallas, Texas where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Texas A&M University-Commerce.