GENE MERRITT:
A Portrait of the Artist
as a Grown Man
By JONATHAN DUBE
March 1, 1998
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GENE MERRITT: A Portrait of the Artist as a Grown Man By JONATHAN DUBE March 1, 1998 |
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 Gene Merritt Click to hear him quack  "Phyllis Diller," undated Photos by Deidre Laird Design by Jonathan Dube |
Gene Merritt grasps the black pen with his weathered fingers, touches the
felt tip to the paper and makes a graceful semi-circle. A few quick arcs and
his marks begin to resemble a duck's bill. He outlines the duck's head, then tops it off with the beginnings of a hat. He starts talking again. He's never quiet for long. I started out with Donald Duck. But now I'm doing him up like a cowboy. He's supposed to be a sea captain. But I'm making him up like a cowboy. It's a big, rimmed cowboy hat. He goes back down to the bill, draws nostrils, then a pointy tongue. I'm guessing. I don't know how it will look. I ain't gonna draw the whole thing. I'm just doing a figurine of him. Gene draws squiggly lines across the face. Suddenly he lets out a loud ``quack quack quack'' in his best Donald Duck voice, then bursts out laughing. His buddy Tom Stanley, director of Winthrop University Galleries, stares at him from across the Watkins Grill table, mystified. ``See, I've got more to learn from Gene than he has from me,'' Tom says, smiling.
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