THE BACKSTORY

For a Southern California artist accustomed to an endless parade of 72-degree days, wind and rain arrive as dramatic departures—weather events worth documenting. In Wind and Rain, part of Morin's broader weather series, Donna Morin breaks from her characteristic geometric precision to capture the rare atmospheric disruption that transforms the Inland Empire's typically tranquil skies.

Morin's turn to ink began during the pandemic, when the weight of loss and devastation made working with color feel impossible. The shift to monochrome became both a return to nature and a necessary restraint—a way to process grief through stripped-down essentials. Using gestural, calligraphic strokes and spontaneous ink splatters, she translates the chaos of a storm into abstract visual language. The work pulses with an energy foreign to her sun-drenched surroundings—ink drops fall and scatter across the surface like actual rain hitting pavement, while sweeping marks suggest wind whipping through palm fronds.

Drawing from the bold spontaneity of Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, the monochromatic intensity of Pierre Soulages, and the meditative discipline of Japanese sumi-e and Chinese calligraphy, Morin channels multiple traditions into a distinctly personal vision. Yet her process reveals its own distinct character: where Motherwell worked purely with collage, Morin embraces the tension between intuitive gesture and geometric form, using commercial stencils (originally orange, here painted over with blue ink) as collaborators in creating her squares. This tool becomes another voice in the conversation—the human mark meeting manufactured precision. Even in documenting disorder, she remains anchored to her modernist roots, that perfect square providing compositional stability. The juxtaposition reveals the heart of the work: freedom and whimsy dancing against order, chance blooming within constraint, nature's unpredictability framed by human geometry.