Merle trained with Otto Rogers at the University of
Saskatchewan in the sixties, before attending the Alberta
College of Art in Calgary where she worked with abstract
painter Frank Palmer. They became friends and Palmer acted
as both mentor and instructor for McKee as did former head
of the college Illingworth Kerr. She traveled and painted
with Kerr in the Alberta foothills.
Stewart also studied with renowned Canadian painter Molly
Lamb Bobak who had a strong influence on the artist. Her
move to British Columbia in 1989 allowed her to expand her
knowledge of the varied beauty of the West Coast.
She
has exhibited widely in both one person and group
exhibitions since the early seventies throughout the western
provinces and in Nova Scotia. Her work is found in many
private and public collections across Canada and in Japan,
France, England, Mexico and the Philippines.
“
Little Flower – if but I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Flower in the Crannied Wall
