Through his love of art, Jeff Merrill is helping his students reach their greatest artistic potential. As a teacher of painting and drawing at BYU-Hawaii, Merrill’ said his love for visual art has blossomed throughout his life. “When I was little, I would get bored, and I would always gravitate towards art,” he said. “I would make little drawings or grab some watercolors and paint something. It’s always been part of my life.”Although art would have seemed like an obvious career choice, Merrill said he planned on going to school to become an orthodontist. However, after his mission, Merrill said he knew he wanted to strictly do art. Merrill went to BYU in Provo and graduated with a bachelor’s of fine arts in illustration. Shortly after graduating, Merrill started at a software company that produced educational software. “I started illustrating children’s books and interactive graphics for the games that are now on iPads,” Merrill explained. He then began to make the visual arts his career. “I was working as an illustrator at a place called the Waterford Institute in Provo, and I got into all sorts of things. I took a pottery class, so I learned all about making pots. I took an upholstery class, so I learned how to upholster furniture, and I also started building some furniture that we now have in our house,” Merrill said. As Merrill’s personal artistic style has developed throughout his career, he has tried not to put labels on his work. “I think my art is realistic,” he said. “I’m definitely a representational artist. I draw things. I draw people. I draw artists. It’s mainly still life, landscapes, traditional subject matter, but I try to do it in a way that has a little bit of an expressive quality to it so that it’s not super highly rendered.”He continued, “I like just enough visual interference in the painting strokes and things. It allows the viewer to bring something to it. I think I’m an expressive realist.”Merrill said he takes his passionate attitude and tries to instill it in his students. He teaches painting and drawing but desires for his students to learn more than just that.“I want them to see,” he explained. “That may sound really simple on the surface, but what it means is to learn to see through the eyes of an artist. It means an understanding of abstract principles of shapes and colors and lines and to see them for what they really are.”If they can see, then they’re gonna be successful in whatever they do--whether it be graphic design, photography, sculpting, or whatever visual art thing they pursue--and that will be one of the most important things for them.”Merrill said he believes trusting in your own creativity and ideas will greatly benefit a student’s academic and social growth. “They need to let the understanding of how they see themselves as an artist influence their development so that they can grow and prosper on their own instead of having somebody feed them and tell them, ‘Oh, you should do this,’ or ‘Have you thought about this?’ Ultimately those ideas have to come from themselves,” he explained. “I think trusting in yourself is true with whatever you do, even if it’s not the arts. You’re in college to learn how to think and to analyze information and to use it to your advantage. You’re here to help your development and growth.”As an artist, Merrill said he draws his inspiration from other artistic fields. “The simplicity and the elegance of those who have mastered a skill come from a lot of hard work and toil and mistakes,” he explained. He was particularly inspired by one of his mission companions who was a concert pianist. “It was amazing to see that it wasn’t just flowing out of his fingers, but it was a culmination of the rhythm and all the things that I don’t understand about music, and it still looks amazing.”Merrill added, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When I see a painting that has a limited number of brush strokes, that means much more than a greater number of brush strokes. The whole painting is greater than all of those things individually.” Simplicity and ease are Merrill’s greatest motivators. Since he began teaching at BYUH three years ago, Merrill has won awards. As a consistent accepted applicant of the Oil Painters of America National Juried Exhibition, Merrill won first place in the Oil Painters of America Fall Online Showcase 2011 and 2013, and a Gold Medal Award in the Oil Painters of America Western Regional Exhibition in 2014.“I think if I weren’t painting, I’d have to do something with my hands. I’ve always done things that have related to the arts,” Merrill said.
Writer: Emily Halls ~ Multimedia Journalist
