Merlin Waterson CBE, FSA *

The patterns of light and shade on historic buildings or rugged cliffs are favourite subjects of Merlin Waterson. Frequently he has stumbled on such subjects in remote countryside: a ruin high on an Umbrian hillside, a temple clinging to a rock face in Bhutan, or a precipitous stac off St Kilda. He works from drawings made quickly on the spot in pencil and white chalk on grey paper, and then translates them into paintings or the slow process of wood engraving.

Merlin was taught engraving by Sarah van Niekerk and he has been influenced by the work of Peter Reddick, Giorgio Morandi, Walter Sickert and Dick Lee.

He read the History of Art at King’s College, Cambridge.  His books include The Servants’ Hall (1980), The National Trust: The First Hundred Years (1994) and most recently Rescue and Reuse: Communities, Heritage and Architecture (2019).

In 2010 Merlin published a selection of engravings of churches and monasteries, Stone and Scorper, and in 2016 produced Light into Lemonwood: wood engravings of mountains and monuments, both printed from the block by Hand and Eye Letterpress. His engravings have been published in Matrix, a journal of fine printing. He has also contributed to Multiples, the Society of Wood Engravers’ journal.  Merlin was Chairman of the SWE from 2020 to 2022.

He says ‘It has come as a delightful surprise to find that people recognise in my paintings and engravings a shared response to wildness and decay.’