Darlean Morris

Canadian painter Darlean Morris is a staunch advocate of abstraction, though her brightly-toned geometric forms, when applied to aluminum, often evoke landscapes and natural forms. Her oil compositions are roughly textured, with paints applied in liberal quantities, but there is also incredible precision in the Ontario artist’s arrangements of rectilinear shapes. These frequently take on prism-like qualities, refracting and diverting the paths of colorful light that pass through them. Fauvist pinks and oranges, turf greens and sunny yellows overlap, producing surprising new tones that beam outwards in hybrid patterns and on surprising paths.

The choice of aluminum as a support makes ingenious and appropriate sense. The sleek surfaces seem to give the colors greater freedom, as they glide through one another and spread towards the edges. Morris accentuates this ease of movement with provocatively off-balance planes that emphasize impressions of velocity. Her paints, some applied in even strokes, others in thick daubs, often scratched away to reveal hidden layers, are spectacularly vivid. They slide into never-quite-stable shapes and spaces.