Artospective: Abstract Expressionist Paintings by Magdalena Morey.

From The Distance

An Interview with Magdalena Morey.

Who and where are you from?

My name is Magdalena Morey and I'm a professional abstract expressionist artist, originally from Poland but now living in Spain. I grew up in Lublin, Poland and have always loved being surrounded by nature.

How you got into this?

I've loved creating things since I was a small child and would spend my early summers experimenting with mud, sticks and stones. By the time I was a young teenager I understood that Art was an essential part of who I am and studied Textiles at art college for 5 years before moving onto studying Painting at university for another 5 years whilst also working full time at a commercial art studio in order to pay my fees. In 2005 I moved to Cambridge, England and began developing my own style and technique; it was surprisingly hard to do before then when I was working full time painting for someone else! In 2009 I moved countries again and went to live in Switzerland. The dominant art scene there was more abstract than I had been used to and I began to incorporate aspects of it into my work. After my husband's contract in Switzerland came to an end, in 2015 we moved to Spain, since when I have been concentrating on my art career full time.

What is your driving force?

I've always felt a powerful connection to the natural world and the drive to express it by whatever means has only grown stronger with age. I absolutely love travelling and experiencing places slightly off the beaten track and much of my landscape work comes from the desire to express the beauty of specific moments spent surrounded by amazing scenery. I also do figurative work which provides me with an outlet through which I can examine my own states of being.

What kind of work you do and why?

These days my work can be broadly categorized as mixed media abstract expressionist landscapes and figurative. Most of my work from the past year or so also includes gold or copper leaf to a greater or lesser extent, which I have found to be a huge help in trying to capture a sense of the incredible heat and quality of the light here in central Spain. I never paint traditional self-portraits, but the women in my figurative pieces are all a part of me in some way and provide me with a necessary internal counterbalance to my very much external landscapes.

Tell us more about your thought process.

When I begin a landscape painting I usually have either a photo of a spot I've visited or an image in my mind of a particular quality of light that I'd like to capture. I work in acrylics, watercolors, pastels, pencils and gold leaf and there's a lot of room for experimentation so I will regularly notice a detail in the painting that I'm working that contains a particularly interesting effect and will start a fresh canvas to explore that effect. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. An interesting challenge is when I get asked to either scale up or down a previous painting. Techniques that work at one size often don't look good at a different scale so I'll need to invent a new technique to achieve the same overall effect.

Please share with us the one modern artist whose work you find Interesting and why?

Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930 – 2017) was a Polish artist/sculptor and fibre artist, known for using textiles as a sculptural medium. One of her most recognizable works is a 3 dimensional fiber work called Abakans and also her figurative and non-figurative series called Humanoids. I have found her work inspiring ever since I was in art college studying textiles as she was merging textile art with sculpture.