Nature With a Twist

Daphne Morris paints objects of nature with the appreciative eye of an illustrator, the heart of an environmentalist, and the imagination of an artist. Morris, who lives on an isolated island north of Seattle, sees her art as both an extension of her connection with nature and an outlet for her creativity.

The artist began her career as a marine biologist and naturalist illustrator, recording, in meticulous biological detail using ink and paint, the fauna of the Chukchi Sea, located off Alaska's northwest coast. This honed her skills in rendering, as her work had to conform to the rigid rules of scientific illustration. For example, the light in most scientific illustrations is expected to come from the upper left-hand corner. Also, scientific illustrators must idealize their subjects to assist in identification. If some plant leaves are withered or insect-chewed, the illustrator fills in the holes and removes any withering.
For the last 10 years, Morris has painted for herself, not for scientific purposes, so she no longer has to adhere to those rules. Although her pieces are still strongly influenced by her background in scientific illustration and her fascination for plants and animals, she can now include nature's imperfections?flawed leaves, a crab with a broken claw?which she may view as integral, interesting features of a subject. Morris prefers simple or no backgrounds, a feature carried over from biological illustration. Rather than paint her subjects surrounded by their natural environment, she wants an undistracting presentation of the symmetry and grace of a plant or animal.

"Now I get to play with my natural subjects," says the artist. "For example, at first glance, my painting Braided November Blackberry and Roses may seem to be a scientific illustration, but nature would never braid the vines as I have painted them. That is my touch of fantasy." Morris had longed for the chance to play with her natural subjects. "Some of the artists who inspire me are those who pull delicate imagery from nature and imbue it with insight, social significance, religion, and even wacky humor," she notes. "I admire the imagination and allegorical work of artists like Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), as well as contemporary fantasy artists such as Brian Froud and James C. Christensen. I choose to paint relatively ordinary subjects with a bit of a twist," she continues. "I want to infuse a sense of delight in my work, and I often try to make the delight subtle enough that viewers may not see my twist at first." Sometimes, however, Morris's twist isn't subtle at all. In her painting Paisley Crab, the animal pictured is anatomically correct, but its wonderfully impossible coloration is completely fanciful.

Even in her Kimono series, Morris integrates subjects of nature, such as a pattern of colored pebbles or an orchid motif. "I like the mix of formats," she says. "I like the Asian format, combined with a natural history format, with some experimentation with different techniques in the background." Although many of her backgrounds are so muted they are nearly nonexistent, she likes to try different textures to highlight her subjects. "Unfortunately," she admits, "my experiments sometimes fail. I salvage these attempts by using black ink to paint out the background." She also uses ink as a part of her palette when she wants the crisp contrast of black. Morris prefers Sanford Higgins waterproof black drawing ink. She suggests, when using inks, to test them first, since some inks marked waterproof still bleed when they come in contact with water. She also warns that ink can be hard on bristles and suggests using lower quality brushes for ink work.

Morris uses Crescent cold-pressed illustration board for a working surface. Her original drawing is made on tracing paper, which she transfers to the board, refining it with a 2B pencil. She prefers board because it is tough enough to stand up to erasing as she finalizes the lines of her composition. She uses Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes ranging from Nos.
0 to 4, but she finds that a No. 3 brush is usually fine enough for all of her small details. The artist uses two palettes containing pigments from a variety of manufacturers. The brighter palette she uses for florals and brilliant crabs, and the muted palette she uses for foliage and rocks. Her brighter palette consists of cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, phthalocyanine red, cadmium red deep, quinacridone magenta, cadmium yellow pale, yellow ochre, Hansa yellow, chromium oxide green, and sepia. Her muted palette contains quinacridone gold, quinacridone magenta, indigo, sap green, chromium oxide green, Van Dyck brown, raw umber, moonglow, Davy's gray, and buff titanium. Both palettes include neutral tint for shading and shadows, and she occasionally uses Chinese white straight from the tube for highlights. The artist notes that "although the hue I select is important, I find the mixing quality of my pigments to be critical since I often mix on the painting surface by dropping colors into a wet surface. My goal is to forgo micromanaging areas and allow the nature of the pigments to describe colors and textures." In the legs of her crabs, for example, she wets each leg section and drops in pigment, allowing the paint to create texture. She says she continues to experiment with texture, "using fingers, tissues, kitchen wrap, netting, cat whiskers, sponges, salt, and whatever else is at hand." A unique surface she occasionally includes in her work is gold leaf, which she incorporated into the image Crab d'Or, which is included in her painting Celtic Crab. She says applying gold leaf is a painstaking process, but one that creates surprise and delight.

Commenting on composition, Morris says, "The natural objects I paint tend to come self-composed because of their symmetry. The crabs, for example, are amazingly balanced because they have to both walk and swim. And the bodies of the marine invertebrates that I love to draw are so adapted to their environment and activities that it's easy to illustrate them properly."

She finds watercolor a wonderful medium for her work because of its portability. Her paintings are not large, so she does not have to be confined to her studio to work on a piece. A brush she finds invaluable in the field is a Niji waterbrush, distributed by Yasutomo. The brush contains a reservoir of water and needs only to be wiped on a cloth to clear pigment and begin another color.

Her advice to other artists is to continue to take classes and workshops and to network with their peers. "Even though I think I have refined and customized all my techniques and approaches," says Morris, "occasionally in a class I will embark on an outrageous project that can become a pivotal point in my art."

Morris received an undergraduate degree in zoology at the University of Washington, in Seattle. Upon graduation, she worked for the university's College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences as a laboratory technician and illustrator, inking and painting marine flora and fauna. She received her master's degree in art history from the same university, with a focus on the art of Northwest Coast Native Americans. Morris subsequently co-authored a guidebook to the Native American art of Washington. She has shown her work in juried exhibitions throughout the Pacific Northwest. The artist can be contacted by e-mail at daphne@rockisland.com.