Morgan Adler (b. 1994) received a B.F.A. in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2018. She grew up lakeside in Cleveland, Ohio, and has lived in Savannah and Chicago. She has traveled the globe, gathering inspiration from the natural beauty of Australia, Europe, Antarctica, South America, and Alaska. Her abstract landscape paintings were conceived during a formative residency outside of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and have been exhibited throughout the United States. Adler’s gestural and evocative paintings often depict natural disasters and weather phenomenon to convey a deeper emotional message, suggesting several memories or upcoming events. She currently works in Chicago as a full-time artist and muralist.

My work explores landscape painting with an abstract approach to space, texture, and color. I create worlds where paint itself is the main character of the scene it’s portraying. Drips, splatters, marbling, and urgent strokes layer upon one another to tell a visually dramatic and vibrant narrative. The paintings often depict natural disasters and weather phenomenon to convey a deeper emotional message, suggesting several memories or upcoming events. The multiple horizons and ambiguous sense of time forms a space that refuses to indicate when or where we are. The hypnotic fluidity and desolate expanse offer a tempting refuge of captivating visuals yet incorporates alienation and disorientation. I paint to question the barrier between physical and emotional landscapes, creating expressive narratives that relate to my experience, identity, and relationship to the material. But like nature, it is always shifting and reinventing.