Starting this week, you can find one of Morgan Mercer’s paintings, “Dreamland,” hanging in the Phoenix’s permanent collection on the 6th floor between 602 and 603.
Read more about the process for creating her artwork.
With a scissors in hand, Morgan Mercer grabs the cardboard box of more than 1,000 printed sheets sitting at her feet and begins to cut. While stacks of black and white images might not look like the beginning of her color-filled abstract paintings, they are.
“My entire painting process starts right here on the couch,” the Twin Cities-based artist jokes. “I spend hours sourcing, resizing and cutting hundreds of pages of images so I can turn them into collages.”
The dreamlike scenes she builds out of paper, which often depict adventurous women boldly striking out on their own into fantastical landscapes, then become the starting point for her large, abstract paintings.
Tell us more about the process behind your work?
Everything starts with the collage. This is where I build the composition of the painting, and also the story. I’m an abstract painter because I love the lushness of oil paint, but I wanted to create paintings that had meaning behind them as well. The collage gives me a story and a feeling to focus on while I work. It helps me think through where I want the lights and darks to go, the kind of brushstrokes I’ll use and how I want the movement to flow through the final painting. It also determines the color palette. I make the collages black and white on purpose because I don’t want to be influenced by any of the colors of the original images. When I pick the color palette for a painting, it’s a super intuitive process. I have a big file of images on my computer of color combinations I like. I scroll through those and pull out the ones that feel like they fit the mood and feeling of the collage. From there, I narrow it down to 20 or 30 individual colors. Then I spend 10 to 15 hours hand-matching each color in the studio. Once I have all of the paint recipes done, l print the collage on a piece of transparency paper, project it onto the canvas and draw it before I start painting. When I paint, it’s about bringing the feeling of the collage to life in an abstract way.
What’s the backstory behind “Dreamland,” the painting the Phoenix added to its permanent collection this week?
“Dreamland” is part of a body of work I made after reading Erin Morgenstern’s book, “The Night Circus.” I loved the book because the author did such a phenomenal job of crafting these luscious, full-sensory environments I wanted to experience — midnight dinner parties, a cloud maze, a frozen ice garden, and of course, the night circus that housed it all. Reading her book inspired me to make my first collage out of circus images and then use it to create a painting. While the imagery in my work is different now, those same feelings of wonder, curiosity, adventure and discovery are still at the core of my art.
How do you know when a painting is done?
It’s usually a feeling I get when I see a series of things start to come together in a piece. If I look at a painting and think, “I hate that area,” then I know the piece isn’t done. So one of the main things I’m always looking for are areas I can’t stand to look at — those have to change before a painting is finished. I’m also looking for the right balance of colors and variety in the brushstrokes I use. I want the viewer’s eye to move around the canvas, but I also want there to be moments of rest. Last, there has to be enough visual history built up in the work. I typically work on a painting anywhere from five to nine times, and doing that allows me to build up areas with overlapping details and layers of transparency that start to feel magical. Those are some of the qualities I look for when deciding if a piece feels complete or not.
What’s your favorite color?
Phthalo green. It’s transparent, so it feels magical to paint with. If I’m stuck, I often add a little phthalo green to the canvas and it always seems to make things better.
What’s your favorite tool in the studio?
Either my massive three-foot-long glass paint palette or my old-school overhead projector that hums when I use it.
Outside of the Phoenix, you can see Morgan Mercer’s work in the upcoming Northern Lights Juried Exhibition at the White Bear Center For The Arts in February, or during her open studio event at Art-A-Whirl in May. Find details on her website at morganmercer.com, or on her instagram @morgan.e.mercer.