ILENE MEYER 1939-2009

Sadly, we've just learned of the passing of painter Ilene Meyer on June 3, 2009.

Ilene Meyer

Ilene Meyer was born in Seattle, Washington on December 30, 1939. A self-taught artist who was inspired by her mother's drawings, she began showing her oil paintings at West Coast science fiction conventions in the late 1970s. Harlan Ellison first encountered her work at a WesterCon art show and arranged to use one of her paintings on the dustjacket for the Underwood-Miller edition of his book, Harlan Ellison's Watching in 1989; Tim Underwood was so intrigued with her lush, Dali-inspired surrealistic paintings that he commissioned her as the cover artist for the acclaimed series of books, The Collected Letters of Philip K. Dick.

The exposure helped launch Ilene's gallery career and she was the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States as well as in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagasaki, Japan (where she became something of a TV celebrity). Her still-life paintings had astonishing depth, while her whimsical paintings of animals (both real and imagined) were both fun and thoughtful. Some of her work appeared in various editions of Spectrum.

We had put together a hardcover collection of her paintings, Ilene Meyer: Paintings, Drawings, Perceptions in 2005 that we hoped would serve as a brief precursor to a much more thorough examination of her engaging art sometime in the future. Hopefully it will serve as a vibrant memorial to an invigorating artist.

Rest in peace, Ilene.

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