Robert Meredith paints everything: landscapes, portraits, and still life, but his specialty and unique talent is trompe l’oeil or “fool the eye” realism.
Since his first summer job at the age of 16, designing tombstones and stonework in the design department of McNeel Monument Company in Marietta, Georgia, Robert Meredith has worked continually as a professional artist. He received his BFA in drawing and painting from the University of Georgia in 1964. Lamar Dodd was his major professor.
Beginning with his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Fine Arts Gallery on West Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, Robert Meredith has had 51 one-man shows spanning the past half century. His first museum exhibition and the sale of 10 paintings at the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1967 firmly established him as a “working artist” and led to two further exhibitions at the Parthenon. The Creative Arts Guild in Dalton, Georgia, has hosted him on four occasions with one-man exhibitions. The most recent was a retrospective of 60 paintings, 30 recent paintings and 30 paintings from the collections of Dalton patrons. He has had solo exhibitions at William Paterson College in Paterson, New Jersey, and DeKalb University in Decatur, Georgia.
In 1991 the historic St. Botolph’s Club of Boston, the famous art association of the Boston painters where John S. Sargent and Claude Monet were first introduced to the United States, honored Mr. Meredith with a dinner and exhibition of 30 of his paintings. His home museum, the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, has encouraged his career with four exhibitions of his paintings, the last of which, his 50th solo exhibition, featured 58 paintings during a two-month exhibition.
Robert Meredith has paintings in the collections of the State of Tennessee and the Tennessee Fine Arts League in Nashville, Tennessee; DeKalb University in Decatur, Georgia; Southern Polytechnic in Marietta, Georgia; and Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia.
He is a former member of Grand Central Gallery and the Salmagundi Club in New York City. His work has been sold by the Alexander Gallery, Berry-Hill Gallery, and Gallery Henoch, all of New York City. He has often participated in group shows and competitions, including the prestigious National Academy of Design Biennale in New York City, and has won numerous prizes and awards. He is frequently asked to judge exhibitions.
His collectors include the actors Steve Martin and Vincent Price; the number one collector of American art, Richard Manoogian; the first man to pay one million dollars for a piece of furniture, Eddy Nicholson; Peter Bonaparth, president, Jones New York; and Arthur and Stephanie Blank of Atlanta. His work is also represented in many corporate collections, including Tyco Toys, Masco, Jones New York, and Wellington Management in Boston, and in countless private collections. Six portraits of former Cobb County superior court judges by Mr. Meredith hang in the Cobb County Courthouse in Marietta, Georgia. A portrait of his grandfather, James Robert Meredith, the first mayor of Hartwell, Georgia, hangs in the Hartwell City Hall.
Robert Meredith paints everything: landscapes, portraits, and still life, but his specialty and unique talent is trompe l’oeil or “fool the eye” realism. His enthusiasm for trompe l’oeil developed naturally. While searching the streets of Manhattan for subject matter, he discovered antique toys and invented a trompe l’oeil store window in which to display them. Realizing that a window was a frame into which he could put anything, a succession of window paintings quickly followed — music stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, and florist and antique shop windows. Soon Meredith added trompe l’oeil shelves to his resumé and fictive cabinets so deceptive that gallery goers often examine them without realizing they are paintings. Meredith considers it his greatest compliment to see a patron attempt to turn a painted tag or flick a painted chip of paint from a weathered trompe l’oeil frame.
Except for a dozen years in the New York area, Robert Meredith and his wife, Brenda, have always called Cobb County, Georgia, home. After being introduced to Saint Simons Island, Robert regularly returned to the island to paint its live oaks and marshes. In 2012 Meredith and his wife moved to Saint Simons Island, which became their full-time home.
Robert Meredith is represented by Anderson Fine Art Gallery, Saint Simons Island, GA, and T. H. Brennen Fine Art, Scottsdale, AZ.
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