Connie Morris
BIO
Connie is a Fine Art, Education and Design School graduate. Her career has incorporated all of these skilled disciplines and all have been influential in her practice and approach to creating. She has exhibited in galleries, outdoor exhibitions and in educational institutions. As a teacher, facilitator of art programs, as well as having worked at Tri-Art for many years, her approach to painting is a fusion of the cerebral and logistical.
Artist Statement
And The Sparks Flew At the Log’s Gathering Around the Fire was created specifically for the White Pigment show. It is a continuation of a current thematic exploration into my relationship with fire. Working with a stylized, basic representation of this beautiful, giving and yet destructive element and this dichotomy is what intrigues me. The imagery of logs and wood are reoccurring subjects in my work. They have become a personification of a sense of place, life’s stages, and presented choices for myself. In this piece it is an instance of choice to either stay away or getting close.
It was a challenge to work with a reduced and somewhat dictated palette. I had to restrain the urge to go dark or use dramatic colours for contrast. I wanted to capture the smokiness of fire which can hinder clarity and the tenderness and fragility skin-like quality of birch bark . The use of line became fundamental to define what is there and what is not. Using charcoal that is a bi-product of a fire was a natural choice.
Sea Side Waves / Sea Side Sky
Painting with white couldn’t be more perfect for these small works that have captured a huge moment in time. When I went to the sea side for the first time I wanted the moment to last forever. It was a hazy day, the colours were muted and the sky was so vast. I only had a small sketch book and needed to capture the essence of the scenery with a few lines. These lines later translated into paint strokes. Blue for the water and sky, red for the car we were driving, and white to capture everything else I was feeling but could not put into words. In this case, “less is more” couldn’t be more true, or more aptly, “white says more”.
