Long Island's Parrish Art Museum Features Works by Malcom Morley Heavily Influenced by Aviation

By S. Mark Rhodes

Flight of Icarus (1995) - Collection Timothy EgertLong Island’s venerable Parrish Art Museum has recently opened in a striking new location on the Island’s East end and it’s inaugural exhibit features the work of renowned, British-born artist Malcom Morley. This is particularly fitting since Mr. Morley has lived and worked on Long Island for almost 30 years.   

Mr. Morley’s work in this particular exhibit (titled “Malcom Morley: Painting, Paper, Process”) includes almost 50 works of Mr. Morley’s art covering roughly the last 30 years of his work.  This exhibit is heavily influenced by Mr. Morley’s memories of growing up in wartime Britain and going through the Blitz. 

As a result of this influence the exhibit here is heavily Pictures from the Azores (1994) - Collection of Monica and Richard Segalweighted towards aviation imagery.  Mr. Morley’s exhibit showcases his versatility as he manages to create works from watercolor, oils and paper models.  One of the exhibit’s showstoppers is Flight of Icarus (1995), which is a paper construction about eight by 10 inches featuring a fiery-red Dutch Fokker triplane – the signature aircraft of the Red Baron – colliding head first into a large red sun. The interest in this piece, besides its size, is the tension between the whimsy and violence of the image.

Other works are less intense and more playful such as Pictures from the Azores (1994), which features recreational aircraft zipping above while beach goers laze about in the sun.  Indeed, in many of Morley’s watercolors and oils one can feel the ancient thrill of breaking free of the earthly bonds of gravity even in the terrifying theater of war.  Mr. Morley’s work here differs quite a bit from his work in the 60s where he made The author’s wife Lynn at the “new” Parrish Museum on Long Island’s East End.an impact with super-realist paintings.  These works are considerably more playful, and upon viewing them it is easy to imagine the artist as a young boy constructing toy battleships and airplanes even as the Blitz was taking its awful toll on Britain.

For more on the Long Island’s Parrish Art Museum visit www.parrishart.org