Distinguished Welsh artist Merlin James is bringing an exhibition of new works entitled "Birds, Place and Other Things" to the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin until 22nd November. Writing in the New York Review of Books recently, the American critic Sanford Schwatrz identified Merlin James as one of a group of painters that emerged in the late 1980s, after neo-expressionism and New Image painting, with 'more freedom to experiment, to make painting a more personal realm...to connect their work with painting from earlier eras'. Profoundly involved with figuration and painting history, James nevertheless, as Schwartz notes, grew up under the reign of minimalism and conceptualism, and his work is 'informed almost as much by ideas that question representational painting as glorify it'. James lives and works in Glasgow. James is also an accomplished and widely published critic and his solo exhibitions have included shows at the National Gallery, Wales (1995), Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (1996), Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York (2005, 2008), as well as Kerlin Gallery (2002, 2003, 2005) and New York Studio School (2007). James represented Wales at the 52nd Venice Biennale.
