These works form part of an ongoing inquiry into the subtle mechanics of cause and effect—how patterns emerge, shift, and repeat across time, space, and matter. At the heart of this investigation is the act of mark making: a meditative, repetitive gesture that becomes both a form of devotion and a quiet disruption. Each mark, whether inked or etched, adds to the accumulation of texture and rhythm, layering meaning onto surfaces that were once discarded or overlooked.
The materials used are always found—scraps of packaging, offcuts of paper, fragments of forgotten utility. Each project begins with what the world offers, and in that sense, each work is shaped as much by chance as by intention. The resulting compositions are distinctly unique, contingent upon the quirks of the material’s surface, its scale, its scars, and its history. And yet, across all variations, a single, recurring element remains consistent: the overlaid grid. It is a latticework of cross-hatched ink lines—carefully drawn, sometimes obsessively repeated—woven into the surface like a kind of ornamental scaffolding.
What begins as purely decorative evolves into something more ambiguous. The grid, though uniform in its structure, becomes a field through which individuality begins to assert itself. It is within this tension—between the predictable structure and the unpredictable outcome—that the true energy of the work resides. Shapes begin to emerge. Irregularities surface. The eye finds paths through the density. Out of order, complexity arises. This slow shift from the uniform to the singular is both the subject and the process.
This is what Pure Sugar contains.
The title itself nods to refinement and repetition—to the transformation of raw material into a purified state. But it also points toward illusion: the sweetness of ornament, the seduction of surface, and the labor that lies beneath it. Like sugar, the works dissolve slowly. They ask for time. They reward prolonged looking.
Each piece becomes a quiet exercise in witnessing change unfold—not in grand, dramatic gestures, but through the slow layering of line, of pressure, of presence. In this way, the work edges closer to a kind of personal tonic: the creative act as a stabilizing force, a ritual of noticing, a contemplative return. It is not the final image that holds the power, but the process—the slow, steady unfolding of form and meaning from repetition.
morgan veness 