Mirage

Born in Massachusetts, self-taught artist Josie Morway moved over 20 times in as many years before coming back to Boston to live and work in 2015. Her work has been shown in museums and galleries worldwide, from London and Australia (and the streets of Juarez, Mexico) to Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Montana, and Massachusetts, as well as at fairs like Scope at Art Basel Miami. She’s also worked as a sign painter and muralist, creating large-scale works for cities, businesses, and festivals.

Morway’s work explores both the fragility and the fortitude of the natural world, envisioning the sanctity of wildlife and wilderness in the face of human degradation and seeking to challenge the assumptions and projections we bring to our interactions with the wild. Says Morway of the surreal and unexpected elements of her work; “I think that too often our concern for nature includes a presumption of total understanding, which is just another element of our human tendency to be paternalistic and domineering. It’s too easy to use nature as a metaphor, to mine it for our own inspiration and comfort, to fetishize the parts we find lovely, and subjugate what we find strange or ‘brutal.’ I hope to avoid oversimplification, and instead try to enhance the feeling of mystery, to make images that are intricate and uncomfortable, and to remind myself that no matter how carefully I observe and portray the wild I cannot truly know it."