Sanitman. Acrylic on canvas. 609x762 mm; 24x30 inches. 1980.
Provenance: Zim-Lerner Gallery, New York, with the gallery label affixed to the stretcher bar; the estate of Rudi Ammann, New York, thence by descent private collection, Maryland.
Exhibited: "Paintings of Real People," Zim-Lerner Gallery, New York, 1984.
Domino, know in his academic roles at Donald Merrick, was deputy chairman of the fine arts department at Fairleigh Dickinson University's Rutherford campus and lived in New York City in the 1980. This hyper-realist series depicted New Jerseyans in and around the state in their everyday lives. He exhbited the series in a solo exhibition at Zim-Lerner Gallery in 1984.
Domino (Donald Merrick), was born in Minnesota in an iron mining town where the aesthetic of the workers influenced his practice and aesthetic desires. Leather jackets, mud-covered boots and the uniform of Army base recruits followed his throughout his life. Domino earned a bachelor's degree in art at Chicago Art Institute and a Masters at the University of New Mexico (1955). He taught art at the University of Missouri, the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and was appointed the head of the art department at Farleigh-Dickerson University in Rutherford, New Jersey in 1963.
The mid-1960s were his artistic and personal awakening. Through his self-exploration and increased focus on his creative practice, he was given the opportunity to show his work at Stompers Gallery in December 1978, and later at Fey Wey Studios in San Francisco in 1979.
