JACK MORROCCO : TOUCHSTONES

Every artist has a story to tell, shaped by particular places, objects, ideas and influences that anchor a life and its work. Perhaps it is only
with time’s gift of reflection that these touchstones and their significance reveal themselves. For Jack Morrocco, they are the subjects
and preoccupations to which he has returned throughout more than fifty years of observation and painting: particular places, the
transformative effects of light, treasured objects, and the artists whose work has accompanied and inspired him. Constant though they
may be, with each return comes the possibility of seeing differently, of discovering something previously overlooked, and of deepening
an already familiar connection.

Jack has long been drawn back to certain places – to Venice and the South of France, to Italy and the Mediterranean – not simply because
he knows them, but because something of their character strikes a chord with his own. Following a year of travel and research (and of
course some hard work painting in the studio!) we have an exhibition in which Paris re-appears as a favoured subject and paintings of
Venice, Rome, Portofino and the South of France feature strongly. These are places with their own long artistic histories and stories that
Jack connects with, but they are also places that seem capable of resisting the intrusions of the modern world. The Venetian canal, the
Parisian café, the Italian piazza and the quiet French courtyard can feel almost timeless, offering something enduring within the present.

Light is perhaps one of the most constant of Jack’s touchstones. He has always sought out the moment when light transforms an
everyday scene: when it filters through leaves onto a café table, catches the crumbling surface of an old façade, illuminates the space
between buildings or turns the lilypond into a field of shifting reflections. It is through light that Jack comes to know a place and, in
turn, communicates its atmosphere to us. The places themselves may be familiar, but light continually recasts its subject, making the
familiar new again. This fascination also connects Jack to the painters he admires – to Monet and the Impressionists in particular – and
to a tradition in which looking closely at the changing effects of light remains an inexhaustible resource.

Other touchstones are found closer to home, within the studio itself. Objects collected over a lifetime, memories and images, fragments
of an engagement with art history and the work of much-admired artists all enter Jack’s contemporary still life paintings and become
part of an ongoing visual conversation. Monet, Singer Sargent, Picasso, Larry Rivers and Peter Blake are among the companions to whom
he has repeatedly returned, to look again through their eyes and, in doing so, bring that dialogue back into his own paintings. His work
embraces continuity and the belief that something meaningful can be carried forward, reconsidered and made personal to another
artist, in another time.

Perhaps this is what a touchstone offers: something constant against which change can be recognised. Jack’s subjects and influences
provide points of connection between past and present, memory and experience, the artist he was and the artist he continues to
become. After more than half a century of painting, many of the subjects that first captured his imagination still hold it today.

Please contact us for a preview of the images and for details of the Private View.

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