FREYA DOUGLAS-MORRIS

For Mid-March Melody, Douglas-Morris created a body of work inspired by the change in season from late winter to early spring. Each piece in the exhibition was made simultaneously in the artist’s studio, creating intrinsic relationships between canvases and building an imagined environment that feels both cohesive and immersive. While the paintings in Mid-March Melody depict natural scenes that seem as though they could be found in Giverny, a boreal forest, or the Scandinavian mountains, none of these works reference a specific site. Rather, each painting is a composite image—a poetic imagining of place inspired by locations the artist has seen or visited, particular feelings, or even qualities of light. By intentionally crafting imaginary spaces, Douglas-Morris allows viewers to locate their own associations, experiences, and impressions within her work.

In Blossom the largest painting in the exhibition, Douglas-Morris uses bright, intense colour, filling the ground of her canvas with rich reds, oranges, and pinks. The gently rolling hills at the base of the composition suggest an almost quilt-like construction, with their warm colours juxtaposed in jewel-toned planes struck through with streaks of blue or green. Douglas-Morris’ bold use of colour allows her attentive treatment of edges to come into focus—in some instances the artist’s line holds, in others it bleeds and blurs. The top half of the canvas is filled with a luminous tree canopy, rendered in complementary shades of sea blue and teal. On each bough, Douglas-Morris has painted hundreds of delicate white blossoms, reveling in the regenerative promise of spring.

In Craspedia Douglas-Morris depicts a mountain seen from a distance across a still lake. Filled with cool pink and purple hues, the serene water is painted with a sheer wash of colour that reflects the smaller mountains along the shoreline. Here, the artist uses a thin layer of oil paint to approximate the effect of watercolour, echoing the water-based technique to render imagery of water with remarkable technical skill. As in other work, Craspedia is not a scene from a specific place—instead, Douglas-Morris explores the image of a mountain as an intuitive idea. Here and throughout the exhibition, the artist presents her canvases as a window into another realm. Rather than recreating physical landscapes, Douglas-Morris depicts internal terrain, open to her viewer’s own journeys, experiences, relationships, and memories. In visualising such ‘felt places,’ the artist’s work occupies a certain universal space, reminding us of our own connection to the natural world and the inner worlds we carry within—the ones we take with us wherever we go.

Press release courtesy Lehmann Maupin