By Julie Rausch

Drawing inspiration from myriad connections within various cultures and art-making around the world, Mira Merriman, art history professor emeritus, presents "Paintings by Mira Merriman."

The exhibition runs April 1-12 in Clayton Staples Gallery, 210 McKnight Art Center.

Merriman’s works will be on sale to benefit WSU’s School of Art and Design. She’ll give a free gallery talk at 5 p.m. Saturday, April 6.

When Merriman retired after 31 years at WSU in 1997, she said she was going to travel the world and write. What she did not anticipate at that time was a return to the passion of painting. Decades before, Merriman painted for 4 1/2 years in a tiny village in southern Spain before giving it up because, she says, she preferred thinking about art to creating it.

"Upon retirement I suddenly had time to play and travel," Merriman says. "When I returned from Thailand I had some beautiful photographs of markets in Bangkok that reminded me of 17th century paintings of salesgirls in fruit markets and of cooks with all the comestibles. I had taken the photos with that in mind. So I tried painting one of them. And to my surprise I had an ability to catch the flavor of the places I so enjoyed. I had skills that were entirely new to me, since I had not painted for 45 years. So I became obsessed and in a year’s time had painted over 60 paintings."

Longtime friend Diane Thomas Lincoln, assistant professor in painting and drawing, says Merriman can look at any corner of the world and describe it in terms of art history.

"She can see Van Gogh in the fields, streams, towns, and settings of people in various activities. She can see Rembrandt, Michaelangelo and the entire cast of past artists in the present. Now that she has picked up a brush she also brings to each subject her own unique style which is highly competent, wise and visually beautiful."

Merriman founded WSU’s art history program, shepherding it in its early years, building up library holdings in art and establishing a teaching slide collection that numbered more than 100,000, before she retired in 1997.

Merriman was born in Poland in 1932. She came to the United States three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor and was brought up in New York City. She earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in art history from Columbia University.

She wants WSU’s School of Art and Design to flourish, Merriman says, "because it is a good school, which has yet to be fully recognized as the resource that it is for the community.

"The question that arose was what could I do to be more useful to my community than sitting and enjoying my aesthetic life? Thus evolved the idea of donating the paintings to the School of Art and Design, which I nurtured and which nurtured me for so many years."