Seren
Morey

Process

My work represents unseen currents of energy and movement lying beneath the surface of our general perception, both microscopic and macroscopic in origin. Making this work is an effort to trace a path back to some unknown past or lost memories hidden deep in the subconscious. Most recently, the paintings have gone beyond references of biological/botanical morphology and evolved into paint creatures that are playful with a menacing edge, and might yet be found in some undiscovered fairytale world. I like the idea of creating “living” artifacts dug up from a distant place in the mind.

The primary medium I work in is Ultralight paint base. I thicken and color the paint base with pigment dispersions, and stretch and pull it like taffy or extrude it through a pastry bag with varying tips to make paint that simultaneously embodies sinew, tendril, petal and claw. I sometimes add additional details into the skin of this paint. In some instances a water based Urethane is used to create reflective pools that are suggestive of windows to an internal space. Puddles of glass beads also serve as a reflective element that may function simultaneously as eggs or geological formations. Finally, the acrylic itself is sometimes sewed and functions as a webbing, embedding forms and tying them together. The sewing of the cut canvas and the actual paint itself are connected to the stitching and healing of past wounds. The imagery is organic and visceral, with suggestions of nerve, bone and vein; flower, vine and thorn; fossils of the past and cells of the future, morphing from one into another. Ideas about the cyclical nature of life and death that represent themselves in themes of decay and rebirth are frequently present. Ideally, I would like to make work that breathes, that is fragile and yet potentially ominous and jubilant, embracing all of the pain and beauty that is life.