Luke Morrison Artist Statement:
I make acrylic paintings that depict simplified scenarios featuring observed and imagined social dynamics. These scenarios involve archetypal representations of working and commuting figures in a sleeper city performing daily life with ambiguous intentions. This ambiguity builds suspense and a longing that feel ever-present in contemporary life, where surveillance and looking are much easier than participation. The most ordinary objects and interactions are removed of much information, allowing for fantasy and the slightest of gestures to hold weight. By isolating minimal details of the mundane, I encourage an attentive act of seeing rather than looking, dwelling deeper in the existential meaning of each moment.
The paintings originate from something seen or experienced, often in passing, that relates to greater themes within the world around me. Using acrylic paint, I am able to repeatedly attempt and edit a painting to build a scenario’s nuances and strike a balance between information and imagination. Scale and distance dramatize form and position viewers as onlookers. Muted color is gradually focused to elaborate and establish a dreamlike, hazy atmosphere. Within this atmosphere, I manipulate color to describe and represent objects, clothing, materials like concrete or brick, and weather. These visual determinations are used to capture the essence of minute details surrounding our daily experience of the world, revealing them as parts of a broader system. This results in a meditative thought process that suggests a possible escape through a conscious acceptance of reality, alongside intimate and private resistance, where one can still cultivate a critical reading and perception of the world.
Biography:
Luke Morrison (b. 1995, Boston, MA) is a visual artist living and working in Providence, RI. Morrison’s work has recently been presented as a solo feature in “Prelude Vol. 5” at Swivel Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (2024). Morrison’s work was presented in a solo exhibition at Dryden Gallery, RI (2021) and has also been featured in group shows at Hexum Gallery, Montpelier (2024), Good Naked Gallery, New York (2023), Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, (2023), Quappi Projects, Louisville (2022), Ortega Y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn (2022), Providence Art Club, RI (2021), and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (2019) among others. His work has been featured in ArtMaze Magazine (2021).
Morrison holds an MFA in Painting from Boston University (2023) and a BA in Drama from Vassar College (2018).