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Aug. 14, 2024 Editor, The News-Gazette: Erich Mercker (1891-1973) was a French-German artist who trained as a civil engineer. However, he had a passion for art, was largely self-taught, and gained a considerable reputation as an “industrial painter” in the impressionistic style. His technical knowledge of machinery combined with emotional interpretation of color and expression led him to see and present the beauty in such things as iron and steel works, coal furnaces, construction cranes and granite quarries. Thereby, things that most people would regard as grim, dirty and ugly, Erich Mercker depicted as aesthetically pleasing.
I think if Mercker were alive today, he would see solar farms also as nice to look at. He would probably be delighted at the large-scale solar farms around the world, especially those that are built in greenfields using panels of different colors arranged in creative ways and shapes, such as circles and grids of rectangles; also the arrays in the French Alps that look like undulating waves, and a heart-shaped solar field built by the German company Conergy on New Caledonia.
He would see the symmetry and novelty that such solar farms can and do have, complemented by using the right landscaping, underpinned by berry crops, small-animal pasture, and surrounded by privacy trees. He would appreciate those acres of panels that are as silver as the precious metal, drawing the sun’s power and energy to keep houses, businesses, schools and hospitals running cleanly and smoothly.
Erich Mercker, civil engineer and impressionistic “industrial painter,” knew that a view, even a “beautiful view,” was what someone imagined it. ANGELA WATKINS Natural Bridge Station
