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Merion Estes (born in 1938) is a Los Angeles-based painter and installation artist. She earned a B.F.A. at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, and an M.F.A. at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico. She moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s and first showed her work at the Women's Building, in a newly formed Grandview co-op galleries. As a founding member of Grandview 1 & 2, she was involved in the beginnings of Los Angeles feminist artist organizations including Womanspace and the feminist action group, "Double X." In 2014, "Un-Natural," a four-artist exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Los Angeles, which included Merion Estes (with Malllinson, Fatemeh Barnes, and Adams), was named one of the best shows in a non-profit institution in the United States by the International Association of Art Critics.

Early Career
Estes was featured in a five-year solo survey of her work at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Park, in 1978, curated by Josine Ianco-Starrels. A group exhibition of the Double X group was presented the next year at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (L.A.C.E). Estes was also included in several exhibits of work by artists with studios Downtown L.A., including one at the ARCO Center Gallery in 1976.

Her work in the 1970s through the 1980s was in the "Pattern and Decoration" movement, as labeled by writers and critics. Suzanne Muchnic wrote in the L. A. Times, "What's interesting about this art is that Estes pulls warm textures from slick materials and builds soft forms from hard-edge patterns…her real concerns are light, space and color transformation achieved by repetition and a rigid system."