THE BACKSTORY

The square, for Donna Morin, means starting over. It means you aren't there yet. In One & Another, a print from 2016, this philosophy of perpetual beginning manifests through the interplay of circles, squares, and geometric forms—her personal vocabulary for mapping a life lived.

Morin's evolution into printmaking opened new territory that painting couldn't provide: texture, pattern, and crucially, the element of chance. Where canvas demands the decisive mark of the brush, printmaking invites collaboration with the universe. Rolling ink onto plexiglass with a brayer, marking it with scrapers, laying down string for texture, then running it through the press—each step introduces variables beyond her control. Too much ink and it squishes into unexpected runs; too little and the image barely registers. Her teacher, Denise, calls this chance "a gift from the universe," and it took Morin years to understand how to receive it.

One & Another embodies this balance between intention and surrender. The title suggests relationship—between shapes, between artist and medium, between control and chaos. Built from simple graphic symbols that recur throughout her practice, the composition becomes narrative: personal and cultural iconography arranged into a visual language that transcends pure abstraction.

Here, in the democratic medium of the print, geometric forms repeat and relate—one shape answering another, each square a fresh start, each circle a completion. The work captures Morin at the mercy of ink and pressure and possibility, finding meaning in the space between what she plans and what the press reveals.