David Richard Contemporary is pleased to present, Naturally, the gallery’s second solo exhibition for Merion Estes. Featured are the various approaches Estes has employed to explore nature and man’s impact on the environment, from her early abstract paintings on canvas and panels to her more recent representational mixed media paintings and collages on paper.

There is a material and physical presence to Estes’ art, largely due to the content, color and pattern, but also the literal and visual scale and combination of diverse materials in unified, lush compositions. Because of her love for and extensive use of textiles and printed papers in complex patterns that yielded compositions with a unique and content driven aesthetic, her earliest works were associated with the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This also garnered her early affiliation with the Feminist movement. Estes has experimented with a variety of paint applications, alternative supports and a wide range of materials that has led to her latest works. While her work addresses serious issues about the environment, the work is abstract and open-ended enough to evoke dream-like sequences, psychedelia and underwater explorarions.

Merion Estes studied at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque and received her MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has had 17 solo exhibitions and her work has been included in over 52 group shows since 1972 in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Denver, Madison, Normal, IL and Alberta, Canada. Her work has been reviewed and published in numerous publications. Estes lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.