Merrick Belyea is a figurative painter who works in a social-realist style. In a time of global conflict and unrest, his work is powerful in its depiction of brutality and the eruption of emotion. The figures are twisted, scrubbed, erased and chopped to an inch of their lives, leaving behind only a ghost of their existence. Hands or clenched fists represent a raw powerful response to a hard world: the same world which brings the live horror of war into our homes.