Catherine Morris Art: February 2014

Artist Statement

The main focus of my personal work is abstracting from nature in the form of painting and drawing. I feel strongly connected to charcoal and acrylic paint as it allows me to work quickly and intuitively without many hindering factors from the materials. Charcoal allows me to push and pull the material on and off of the paper in a more fluid natural way conducive to my practice. Acrylic paint on the other hand dries quickly allowing me to work at a speed and pace that keeps me from becoming too hung up or focused on one idea or physical surface quality. Much like the abstract expressionists, my concerns with the work lye with uninhibited marks and strokes made by pure reactionary movements; letting the subconscious, or in my case, the air of lightly guided subconscious come through in the work. This is coupled with impressionism and post-impressionism practice of working from life and letting the subject’s presence and impact guide the piece rather than grasp for representation out of nothing.

My current body of work focuses on abstracting observationally from plant life while subconsciously infusing the abstraction with the plants historical and medicinal uses to depict the plants overall presence, energy and visual movement. I work improvisational, dramatizing movement and energy exuded from the subject. I work directly from life reacting to the color, texture, movement, tension, and juxtaposition of the subject. This visual inspiration gives me a base to pull from observationally while infusing my own energy and ideas of the subject into the work subconsciously. For example, while working on a drawing based on a wild flower called Echinacea, I would keep the plant's historical and medicinal uses on the forefront of my mind while reacting to the plant’s physical appearance. By doing this my abstraction is now not only in reaction to the physical appearance of the plant but also subconsciously to the information thought of while drawing. This ultimately produces work infused with recognizable elements of the subject while speaking on its overall energy and presence that may or may not be tied to its purpose throughout human history.