Christine Morla

Region: Pacific Coast

My multilayered paintings serve as a means to explore my Filipino heritage and draw on the language of landscapes. Each work consists of hundreds of paper constructions that are adhered to wood panel to create a large work. I make these paintings by first collecting snack food packaging from Filipino products and use them as a material palette. The found papers are cut into thin strips and then meticulously woven together to construct weavings and floral-like shapes.

Weaving was passed on to me by my father who was a weaver in the Philippines. He taught me to use this process as a means for meditation. I combine this cultural influence with a vibrant, patchwork of colors, resulting in a hybrid of patterns that simultaneously recall nature and digital environments. While each painting has its own direction, each part is its own entity, but cumulatively the whole becomes greater than its parts in a choreographed abstraction.