About Coco Bluebell Morris

I make observational drawings of everyday objects as the starting point for the creation of paintings. My practice involves a layered approach to making; building up colour and tone to ‘break down’ and remake what I initially observed. Through paring back, abstracting and distorting the objects, an emphasis is placed on colour/form relationships, the material properties of paint and the process of painting itself.  The paintings explore the different ways in which colours interact to create visual sensations. Gestural brush marks and areas of the canvas where previous layers of colour are preserved are combined to create a colour that the viewer experiences optically as a new one.

Mark Rothko’s paintings, which appear to vibrate due to the process of layering colour, have been a strong influence on my work. I am constantly trying to maintain a sense of luminosity which seems at odds with the layering of heavy colour. The paintings are a balancing act between producing a sense of depth, maintaining luminosity and finding the right set of colours, all without overworking the surface. The result of this is a reduced composition where the image is flattened. I explore the boundaries within the practice of painting in terms of the space between figuration and abstraction, movement and stillness, depth and superficial flatness as the colours within the painting fade between hues. The subtle colour shifts are the only thing maintaining the hazy delineation between forms, all of which diffuse into each other to create an ambiguous space.