L. Scooter Morris calls herself a sensory illusionist, and the phrase fits. Her art doesn’t aim to record what the eye plainly sees but rather what the body senses in passing—the fleeting spark between perception and memory. She turns brief encounters into paintings that feel both immediate and enduring, charged with more than surface detail.
At the center of her practice is what she terms “Sculpted Paintings.” These works resist flatness. Layer upon layer of color, texture, and light push forward, as though the canvas itself wants to break free of its frame. Acrylics and mixed media become her tools for building environments that must be felt as much as seen. While her paintings are undeniably beautiful, their beauty is never detached from meaning. Morris uses the medium to raise questions about equity, justice, and the ties that bind us together. For her, form and ethics are inseparable.
Of Our Own Making (2023, Acrylic and Mixed Media, 19”x37”)
This piece arrives with weight. Paint is built in layers, one upon another, until the surface feels dense, like accumulated history. Nothing in it is passive; every stroke pushes forward. Of Our Own Making becomes a meditation on consequence—on what we build through our own decisions and the traces left behind.
Morris uses contrasts to make that point resonate. Smooth areas sit beside rough ridges. Gloss reflects light while matte sections absorb it. This tension feels human—creation set against destruction, growth against erosion. The painting does not declare judgment. Instead, it invites the viewer to recognize the gravity of choices made and futures shaped.
The wide, horizontal format evokes a landscape, though it is no natural scene. It is an environment of our own design, a reminder that human hands shape the world around us. The painting presses a question: if this terrain is of our own making, what will we choose to shape next?
Dark Money Pulls Strings (2023, Acrylic and Mixed Media, 30”x30”)
If Of Our Own Making speaks to collective responsibility, Dark Money Pulls Strings addresses hidden influence. The title announces the theme before the eye even settles on the canvas. This work is about power—specifically the kind that moves behind closed doors.
Here, Morris uses her medium to suggest manipulation. Parts of the surface are heavy, almost oppressive, while other sections stretch thin, like threads pulled tight across space. The composition feels like strings being tugged, some taut, some loose. The square shape encloses the tension, yet the content refuses balance. The painting quivers with imbalance, evoking the unfairness of unseen forces shaping outcomes.
The symbolism isn’t overbearing. One could easily approach it as pure abstraction, appreciating the crossing lines and colliding textures. Yet the title sharpens the experience. Once spoken, it is impossible not to think of money’s hidden routes, and the way influence distorts systems meant to be just.
A Conversation in Paint
Though different in mood, both works emerge from the same year and reflect Morris’s continuing dialogue with the world. Of Our Own Making stretches outward, expansive and reflective. Dark Money Pulls Strings closes in, tight and uneasy. Together they embody the artist’s concern with how the personal and the political intertwine.
Her method—sculpting paint into layers of surface and depth—becomes metaphor. Society, too, is layered. Each act leaves a trace. Each decision alters the structure. What results can be heavy, even suffocating, but there is also resilience within it. Morris’s paintings carry critique, but they also point toward renewal, showing that reconstruction is always possible.
These are not silent works. They demand that viewers linger, notice, and connect. By weaving social commentary into aesthetic form, Morris transforms her canvases into places of dialogue. Her art becomes a site where texture and meaning meet, where beauty and urgency cannot be separated.
Closing Thoughts
Morris’s “Sculpted Paintings” thrive in the space between form and message. They carry weight, yet they shimmer with allure. Of Our Own Making and Dark Money Pulls Strings differ in approach—one broad, one direct—but both serve her larger aim: to catch fleeting impressions and deeper truths, and to set them in paint so they can be reckoned with.
Her choice of acrylic and mixed media allows for shifting surfaces, alive with light and angle. The works change as the viewer moves, reminding us that perception is never fixed, that reality is layered, and that the marks we make, as individuals and as a society, always endure.
