"My work investigates modern peoples’ relationship to nature. In my images of urban spaces there is almost always an element of nature. In my recent visit to France I began to study the differences between American and European landscape techniques. My paintings reflect nature’s presence in parks, between buildings, and in yards. My present approach is to return to the source of the uniqueness in American Landscape Art, the “wilderness” that inspired earlier American artists. My work brings together a traditional American landscapes with contemporary concerns about urban development, preservation of the natural environment and perceptions of our surroundings. Frequently, I work on-site from direct observation. To be still in one place, observing for several hours, noticing different aspects of a place over time shapes my vision and invests it with personal information that a recording on film cannot communicate. I become absorbed in a place, and my selectivity of what to record on my canvas or paper, become my art. When I do use photographic resources, I attempt to remember the place as if I were again there, to recreate the sensate experience, transcending the flatness of the photograph. My experience is always an inevitably subjective response to the landscape. I believe a distinct aesthetic of my work is derived from the subjective response to sensation in a particular moment and place."

John Morrell

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For additional information, updated biography etc.,
contact Sherry French,
Director of Sherry French Gallery at 212-647-8867.


Click here for artist's biography John Morrell