“As a child, my imagination mixed with the tales and legends I read with a passion, and the reality I looked at... There are often several stories in a single painting... shadows cast on the ground become characters in their own right.” Marie Elisabeth Merlin Drawing inspiration from the New Figuration movement, Merlin has rigorously stuck to figurative painting for the past 30 years, even in the face of the fashionable conceptual tastes of her formative years as an artist. She tends to explore human and animal migration and the power of nature, both joyful and foreboding. Wolves, symbolic of womanhood, family, pack mentality and survival instincts, commonly feature, as do indolent monkeys. Another recurring theme is displacement and environmental transformation; human pleasure-seekers find themselves lost in worlds overtaken by tropical plants and displaced animals. Merlin’s work does not shy away from the damage we’ve inflicted on nature but offers hope in the face of chaos. Merlin has featured in the Financial Times and her work is in the collection of Charles Saatchi; she also completed a decorative mural for Brad Pitt at Chateau Miravel. She lives and works in France.