Marjorie Morrow
Staccato

2014
Mixed media on canvas
38 x 70 inches
$7500

Naming this painting “Staccato” seemed not only like an apt title but created a kind of one-word ekphrastic poem. The title defines and describes the work with its repeated short, detached strokes. Marks are accentuated and abrupt—sharp jabs, energetic and spontaneous, weighty or thin. Even the sound of this title’s single word echoes the process used to make it.

When I work, I usually listen to music and as I do I move with the sounds. I’ve always said I kind of feel like a conductor when I paint. Here skipping notes flow through the painting and develop their own rhythm and sway. They leave airy spaces to breathe.

“Staccato” is representative of the importance of music in my life and in my work.