Bronwyn Merritt was born in Florida and grew up in North Carolina after her family fled city life for a small farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her early influences came from the traditional paintings and ceramics of her mother, and the book illustrations in her father’s large collection of classic novels.
Her love of books and illustration led to work in book and paper arts, then to collage, and finally to a mature style that combines many techniques in colorful, mixed media paintings. From an early career as a relief printmaker with an art-deco style, she switched to contemporary narrative paintings, and then to mixed media compositions.
These works contain layers of traditional printmaking and painting techniques to create large scale works on canvas. Her subjects are both narrative and abstract, and always feature rich surface texture and pattern. Her prints are in private collections around the world and in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery and the Weatherspoon Museum.
She has exhibited in galleries around her home state of North Carolina for 25 years, and taught workshops, classes and college courses in studio art and art history. She is currently working on a collection exploring memory and identity through handcrafts left by her mother, a multi-media artist who died from Alzheimer’s Disease in 2013. She has shown in many galleries around North Carolina and maintained her own studio and gallery since 2000.
