FROM: Kevin Lucas, (315) 278-3057 or kevin@lucasgalleryonline.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Skaneateles, NY) – The Lucas Gallery is pleased to bring an internationally recognized artist to our community.  The show is called “Jazz Age Virtues and will feature the work of Richard Merkin and Jason King.

The Jazz Age Virtues show opens to the public on Saturday, March 17, 2007 and will be on display until mid April.

Biographies for each artist are below and high resolution images of their work will be made available on request.  A sample will also be included as an attachment to an email that will follow this one.  If you do not receive that e-mail but would like the images, simply contact Kevin Lucas at (315)278-3057 or visit the Web Site at http://www.lucasgalleryonline.com for contact information.

About Richard Merkin

Richard Merkin’s work conjures up scenes that evoke the raucous spirit of the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. In his witty, often eccentric illustrations, Merkin depicts movie stars, jazz musicians, sports heroes and literary impresarios co-mingling with more personal references. In his highly stylized approach to the figure, Merkin privileges color relationships, balance and juxtaposition over strictly literal descriptions of his subjects. He reconstitutes their Jazz Age virtues on canvas in cubist, comic-laced landscapes of tropical color.  And humor; there’s always humor. 

Tom Wolfe, author of Bonfire of the Vanities, wrote, "The typical Merkin picture takes legendary American images-from baseball, the movies, fashion, Society, tabloid crime and scandal-and mixes them with his own autobiography, often with dream-style juxtapositions."

Merkin was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1938, and holds degrees from Syracuse University and the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1962-63 he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting and, in 1975, The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from The National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for nearly 40 years. During this time, he built his reputation in New York. He is represented in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian Institution and the Whitney Museum as well as many others. . Mr. Merkin has been a Contributing Editor for Vanity Fair since 1986 and a regular contributor of illustrations to The New Yorker since 1988, as well as Harper’s and The New York Time’s Sunday Magazine. From 1988-1991 he wrote a monthly style column for Gentlemen’s Quarterly. In 1995, he illustrated the book, Leagues Apart: The Men and Times of the Negro Baseball Leagues, (by Larry Ritter). He wrote the text and captions for The Tijuana Bibles, (Simon & Schuster, 1997
 He also has the dubious distinction of appearing on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, (back row, right of center).

About Jason King

Jason King is a local artist who also captures the Jazz Age with convincing visual narration.  His unique illustration like styling and deceptively simple compositions combine to produce a very real and universally shared memory of rural life in the American 20’s.      

Jason Cooper King, 39, was born and resides in scenic upstate New York
just outside of Syracuse. Showing an early aptitude for painting and
drawing he focused on the development of these skills through grade and
high school. In 1985 Jason attended the first of four years at
Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts where he
graduated Cum Laude as a painting major in 1989.

Jason has since had several showings of his art including one in
Charlotte, Vermont and most recently at Mocha Maya’s Coffee House in
Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. He has also successfully executed
many commissions including the design for sculptures at Sycamore Hill
Farm and Gardens in Marcellus, New York. His painting “Otto on Fish
Creek” was a winning entry at the New York State Fair in August of
2006.

Jason executes portraiture in acrylics that create a universal sense of
nostalgia by working from old photographs and slides of rural America
from the first half of the twentieth century.
This show is designed to be of special interest to interior designers as well as collectors.

Lucas Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 5:00 PM and additional information is available online at www.lucasgalleryonline.com or by phone at: (315) 278-3057.

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2/26/06