Rebecca Morris

Rebecca Morris: My name is Rebecca Morris. 

In the large painting titled Fifteen Thirteen, which is the very tall vertical, the much larger of the two, that painting has a border with a dashy, slate-blue paint line. The dashy line grew out of some watercolors that I did maybe even eight years ago. I just started doing it in a few paintings in little areas. And then there was a painting in 2013 that had a dashy background and it was just black paint on white gesso. It’s hard to say what I like about it; it just seems to capture some feeling. It’s sort of regular but irregular, and it’s—I think in this painting it’s this really nice horizontal moment in a very strong tall vertical and then I like that tension. 

Both of these paintings have interlocking forms inside of them. I’ve done this quite a bit. There’s a really specific kind of pressure when I make those paintings, because everything has to fit into itself. So its edges are conscribed by the shape that’s next to it and is almost intertwined within it and depending on how I paint it, I can create flatness, as if it’s more like a puzzle where things just fit into each other, or I can create a layering feeling, where these shapes are in front or behind each other.