Morgan Ogilvie
Obstinate Toy Soldiers, series, 2022-25
Oil on canvas
22.22 x 12.7 x 3.81 cm | 8.75 x 5 x 1.5 inches (Each)
Growing up in TN, I went to a school steeped in tradition while being raised by a rebellious mother from NY who was at odds with her adopted community and...
Growing up in TN, I went to a school steeped in tradition while being raised by a rebellious mother from NY who was at odds with her adopted community and an eccentric father with a love of physics. Southern etiquette confused me, yet everyone else seemed to know the rules.
With this experience in mind, I pair paintings of young females dressed up for Halloween with girls in horror movies. I use the fluidity and blurriness of paint to interrogate the real versus pretend world of my subjects. I paint wet into wet paint; each stroke disturbs the underlying marks so I can’t get things exactly how I intend. Small paintings are displayed in a grid, a device to sort, organize, and control. In contrast, children playing pretend is unpredictable, similar to my brushwork which is careful but not precious.
It can be difficult to tell which children are from horror movies, and which are trick or treating. Maybe it can be scarier to be a little girl than we like to think?
The Disneyesque toy palette makes the work seem unimportant. Cheerful colors hide the eerie content. In his Artforum essay “Painting: Last Exit” artist Thomas Lawson said, "[Painting] is perfect camouflage…to undermine the certainty of appearances." Disguised by its own seeming palatability, the work, in essence, wears its own costume.