Jack Morrocco FRSA

Anyone familiar with Jack Morrocco’s work will know him as an artist who seeks out the light, finding inspiration where generations of artists have found inspiration before him; in the South of France, Spain and Italy. Light is Jack’s pictorial language, the means through which he translates the scenes before him into paintings that resonate for the viewer. These are paintings which speak of light effects – the dappled light through plane trees and the luminous shafts of light between buildings – but they also awaken feelings and memories, evoking that sense of really being there, and calling upon all of our senses at once to recall or imagine the essence of a place.

Perhaps there is nothing particularly ground-breaking about an artist choosing to pay close attention to the way light falls upon the world. But then Jack is not attempting to be ground-breaking, or novel. The language of light is also the language of Impressionism and Jack seeks continuity with this tradition and its values, actively joining the longue durée of its conversation and making his own veritable contribution in the present. That the language of light is spoken by others past and present, makes Jack’s own voice no less singular and his artistic vision no less his own; the originality is in his interpretation.

Light has a timeless character, as old as the world itself, born anew each day and able through its momentary changes to reveal beauty in the mundane and transform its subject time and time again. The still waters of Venetian canals are transfigured by the early morning or evening light to reveal almost mirror like reflections. The simple French courtyard is given new life by the dappled light of the afternoon and the café becomes a stage for sunlit characters to enjoy their own sense of place. Each of Jack’s paintings communicate exquisitely this transfigurative quality of light – light’s ability to beautifully recast its subject anew – and in this sense the language of light is as old and as new today as it ever was.