Morgan Allender 
the Flood  
12 October – November 28, 2006

Catastrophic events and freak climactic devastations. Morgan Allender’s paintings evoke the ominous quality and the epic scale of Nature; pressures building deep underground as the earth moves and its surfaces shift. 
Her most recent body of work draws upon the ancient concept of Nature as embodied by divine beings that must be respected if storms and disasters are to be avoided: animalistic forces controlling the wind, the sea, and the earth beneath our feet.  In these paintings something has upset the balance. The gods are angry, or melancholy, or simply just watching and biding their time...
Despite their disastrous subjects, these paintings are nevertheless formally beautiful. Allender is interested in the “stuff” of paint; the chemical reactions as it meets the canvas, as pigments combine and layers are hidden and revealed.

In 2006, Allender was awarded the Fleurieu Peninsula Youth Scholarship, a prestigious prize for landscape painting.