Slab Series, Vermillion, Cantilevered

Betty Merken is an American painter and printmaker based in Seattle, Washington. She is an accomplished artist with over 100 solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Japan, China, and Italy. Merken's work can be found in the permanent collections of the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Portland Art Museum, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the Civita Institute in Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy.

Betty Merken co-authored Wall Art, Megamurals and Supergraphics (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1987) with Stefan Merken. She has been honored with awards and fellowships from the BAU Institute in Otranto, Italy and New York (2010 and 2012); The Civita Institute, Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy, and Seattle (2011); and the Pinea-Linea de Costa Artist International (2017) in Cadiz, Spain.

Curators and critics often describe Merken’s one-of-a-kind prints as having the authority of paintings, placing her work in dialogue with Josef Albers, Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Donald Judd, and James Turrell and affirming her place within modern and contemporary art.