MICHAEL MORRILL

When I was an art student, I saw a Carl Andre sculpture and a Clyfford Still painting for the first time.  I didn’t know then that these seminal abstractions were distant cousins.  It didn’t matter.  I was captivated by art that seemed to have an inexplicable quality of timelessness that was somehow present and primal. 

I have little interest in proselytizing or telling stories with my art.  I think those concerns are better left to writers and filmmakers.  I’m interested in the poetry of color, the reflection and absorption of light, and the quotidian properties of materials.  I look for vestiges of gesture and geometry in stratified compositions of light and dark.  I usually paint on wood panels stretched with canvas, which makes stable surfaces for diverse methods of painting.  Dimensional elements occur periodically.  Titles signal references to my interest in the mysteries of cosmology and antiquity.

- Michael Morrill