Ponds and Waterfalls

by Barbara Morris

Barbara Morris, Chasing Waterfalls II, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 48”, 2024

October 11 – November 8

I am a Bay Area-based artist, working primarily in painting and printmaking. My work has been strongly influenced by the Bay Area Figurative School, with its combination of figurative painting elements and abstract paint handling techniques. I have a gestural, expressionistic style, and am passionate about color. My earlier works focused on figures and narrative content, more recently I have been increasingly drawn to landscape-based abstraction.

Often when I paint I will use reference material, still life, landscape, drawings, or photographs. In these works photographs of nature, often featuring images of gardens and water, serve as inspiration for gestural works evoking my impressions and responses to the scene, and to the marks emerging on the canvas. Working on large canvases is comfortable for me. I enjoy painting with my whole arm, my entire body, rather than just my hand or wrist.

Finding points of reference, the ripples in a pond, the roughness of bark, the simple geometry of a bench, I alternate between looking and making specific references to my source material, and a dialogue that emerges within the structure of the painting itself. How one shape, color, or line relates to another. This conversation continues until there seems to be a balance, a point where the painting is saying something. At times I intentionally leave these works very loose, retaining a lot of open areas, areas for the eye and mind to wander.

www.barbaramorrisart.com
IG: @bjmorrisart
FB: @barbara.morris.524