AdSeg time is hard, especially when you don’t know when you get to leave. For some people, the isolation of administrative segregation is too much — they freak. For others, it is a time for art and self-mastery.
Chad Merrill is one of those people. If he isn’t on the phone, he is painting. His style is minimalist and dark, full of emotion and movement that doesn’t conform to normal ideas of movement. One of his inspirations is the artist Roberto Ferri.
His medium might be pen and ink but he paints with his soul. His images are evocative, inspiring even. They do what art is supposed to do: inspire more art. He’s been my neighbor for the last seven months, his art fueling mine and vice versa, making this place more bearable.
Recently, I got up in my vent — the only way we can talk — and asked him to answer a few questions. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Q: Your desire to draw and paint is relatively new. Why did you pick up — and in your specific case make — the brush?
Chad Merrill: I was searching for purpose and a reason to live. My life was dark and seemed meaningless. I had just taken a life in prison and could only think about taking my own. I was consumed by thoughts of suicide. [To escape those,] Art — always with a capital — became the focus of my attention. I made brushes for about six months out of anything I could think of and finally started using toothbrushes. Not the easiest thing to use, but I was determined.
Q: You gained a remarkable amount of skill in a very short time. How’d you do it?
Chad: I spent countless hours painting and painting and painting. Twelve-plus hours a day for over a year and a half. I would lay there at night and think about nothing else. I managed to try to paint every day. I just fell in love with it, creating something from nothing.
Q: What does your art do for you? Much of it is stark and dark, very minimalist — why?
Chad: My art is a way for me to escape and be free. When I’m painting, nothing matters — just the brush and me. I am limited by my materials, so I want my pieces to capture your attention from the jump. My lack of ink allows my work to exist in a suspended start on the paper.
Q: If you could print your masterpiece, what would it be and what would you want people to feel while viewing it?
Chad: I want my masterpiece to be a life-size painting of my cell with me in it, painting the walls, alone — alone and free in my cage. I want people to feel what they feel but hopefully see my sense of determination and freedom, my fight against a system that is aimed to kill me slowly. I want my art to show my struggle to stay alive — a solitary man aching to be felt.
Q: What do you most want to accomplish through your art?
Chad: I just want to live through it.
Q: I know that one of your primary preoccupations is mental health at the highest custody levels of prison. What does that mean to you personally?
Chad: Mental health is overlooked by punitive forces in prison. I was at my worst before I realized I was in real danger of killing not only myself but more people. I was mentally checked out and broken. Broken by a system designed to snuff out my humanity. The DOC [department of corrections] chipped away at me mentally. I no longer knew who I was. Art gave me my sense of self back. It’s my responsibility to try to change my environment and not be changed by it.
Q: In prison you have a violent history. How do you think that affects your art, especially compared to someone who doesn’t have much blood in their past?
Chad: My history of violence has given me perspective. My perspective is constantly shifting and growing, but through violence and blood I’ve learned how fragile and beautiful life can be. I once thought life was cheap. I didn’t care about my own, so how could I care about anyone else’s? I had no idea how to properly process my emotions, so they tilted toward anger and pain. Art allows me to take what I’m feeling and expose it on paper. A friend once told me: “Painting is a way to guide your emotional excrement.” Art gives me range to explore and process my history of violence and what my future looks like.
Q: What is one thing you would change about your life and, being a lifer, what is the ideal situation for your art to thrive?
Chad: One thing I would change about my life is the effect I have on those around me. I want to inspire and motivate. I want to learn to grow too. Being fluid is important to me. If I could give others a chance to see something from a different point of view, then I’m happy. My art will thrive no matter if I’m in the hole, AdSeg or on the yard, because I will it to thrive. My art is an extension of me. Even when I’m at my worst, I’m still alive in here, in my work. That means I’m thriving.
Q: What artistic goals do you have, and how does it feel to know your art is the only thing keeping you alive?
Chad: I wish to be a decent painter one day, to one day paint on canvas with oil paints. I hope to paint with such beauty and despair that my art evokes real emotion. Art has kept me alive so many times when killing myself sounded pretty good. Through all that, art remains my purpose.
Find more of Chad’s art at chadmerrillart.com.
