Ilene Meyer was a painter who created stunning magic realist, fantastic and visionary works, often involving continued themes of checkered planes, geometric objects, animals, sea creatures, flowers, fruit and other aspects of the natural world, real and imagined, swirled into cascades of looping forms as if pulled by strands of liquified gravity.

Unfortunately news is going around the net today, in a way it apparently didn’t at the time, that Meyer died in 2009. There is a remembrance on the Spectrum Fantastic Art site by Cathy and Arnie Fenner, who were the editors of Meyer’s printed collection (if there is a “front door” link to this page from the Spectrum site, I can’t find it). There is also an obit on the Seattle Times.

Meyer was self taught and played with the influence of other artists and various genres in her paintings. She wore her fondness for the work of Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí on her sleeve, making playful homages to many of his themes, particularly from his later “Atomic” period. She became internationally recognized, and her work is exceptionally popular in Japan.

Unfotrunately, Meyer’s official site, Meyerworld, which is still a good place to go for information about the artist and an overview of her paintings, has never been updated with larger images or images of her later work. As often happens when that is the case, others have stepped in to fill the void and we must turn to other sources for larger and later images.

There are a number of Tumblr posts of her work, but for the larger images necessary to really do justice to the detail and visual richness of Meyer’s work, there is an unofficial gallery on the Russian fantasy art collection site, LoNeLy CrazZy, which has an extensive gallery of large images.

To see her work in the best light, however, I’m happy to say the print collection of her work, Ilene Meyer: Paintings, Drawings, Perceptions, is still available. Parka Blogs has a nice visual review.

Another volume, World Below, was a children’s story about survival and change in an ancient civilization that has parallels in modern environmental issues, and is more difficult to find.

For more, see my previous posts on Ilene Meyer, and here.

[Notice of Meyer’s death came courtesy of William Askew. See his comment on my original 2007 post on Ilene Meyer, and his brief personal remembrance on AskArt]