Catherine Morrisey and Patience Morrisey

Patience Morrisey

Catherine Morrisey

​Art making has always been a family affair for Patience and her daughters, Robin and Catherine. Together they have shared many conversations about nature and plant life. 

This sense of harmony with nature is found in Patience’s wood and linocut prints and in Catherine’s paintings. A connectivity rooted in their individual practices bridges generations and mediums.

With texture, mark-making, and colour each artist captures the controlled chaos of nature and landscape in their own distinctive way. Paintings and prints in this exhibition depict rushing rivers, dense brush, and branches swinging in the wind.

By Patience Morrisey

By Catherine Morrisey

Patience is a multidisciplinary artist born in Patience, Alberta, and throughout her childhood moved between England and Woodbridge, Ontario. Inspired by the apple orchards of Ontario, apple trees became a symbol of freedom and comfort for Patience and are a recurring motif in her work. Patience studied fashion illustration and commercial art OCAD in Toronto, and it was during this time that she was taught drawing by Franklin Carmichael of the Group of Seven from whom she learned to dive deeper into scale and storytelling in her art. It was through her upbringing and education that Patience developed her practice to capture narratives about her life, family and the scenes that encapsulated them. Patience has a love of paper leading her to work in print and paper-mache sculpture. Throughout her career Patience kept an active ceramics and printmaking studio in her home.
 
Later in her career, Patience would spread her snowbird wings and began to spend winters in Florida, where much of her imagery became inspired by the flora, fauna, and the people that surrounded her. The cottage that Patience purchased with her husband would place them in an art making community offering art classes and fairs with close proximity to Beer Can Island, which would become a great place of significance for her. In her prints, she observes the prisoners that would come to clean up the Island. Other works include scenes of sand beaches, crashing waves, and tropical trees.
 
Patience’s daughter Catherine had her start in abstract art, earning her BFA from York University during the period of abstract expressionism. It was by returning to memories of her childhood such as summers spent in Tobermory surrounded by woods and water that she would allow herself to explore landscapes in her own practice. Much like her mother, Catherine’s work explores finding meaning through the storytelling of parts of her life, and the nature that surrounds those experiences. She is currently based in London, Ontario.
 
Patience and Catherine’s exhibition opens on October 13th at Westland Gallery, featuring Catherine’s oil paintings of areas surrounding the Thames River accompanied by linocuts by Patience.

By Patience Morrisey

By Catherine Morrisey