Marjorie Morrow
Painting: Mixed Media—acrylic, charcoal, pastel, oil stick, colored pencil, and sometimes collage—on canvas.
An abstract painter in upstate New York’s Sullivan County, Marjorie relocated fulltime in 2018 after fifty years in Manhattan. Originally from the Midwest, her art education includes a BFA in painting-printmaking from Miami University, Oxford, OH and additional special study with Richard Anuskiewicz at Blossom-Kent Music & Arts Program, Kent State University. She has exhibited her paintings and prints since 1968.
My paintings are about energy and freedom, gestural interpretations of what I see–feel in my environment. While abstract, it is inspired by many sources—music; literature; and the contemporary cultural, environmental, and political climates. Of course, my work is also informed by the abundant natural landscape surrounding me as a reference for movement, line, and color.
I work in series, in a variety of sizes ranging from 6 x 8 inches to 6 x 8 feet. In the past 12 years, I have employed the frottage technique: relief and rubbings on canvas.
In this way my paintings continue to relate to my earlier printmaking. Juxtaposed textures of industrial, fabricated grids with organic textures such as tree bark create a contrast and tension, a metaphor for our current environmental dilemma: human
co-existence with the natural world.
Whatever the source of inspiration, the element of chance is important to my process to foster spontaneity and surprise. And color—with its many emotional nuances—is key!”
