Andrea Morganstern is an artist who lives and works in New York City. Morganstern creates new forms and worlds that are inspired by recurring patterns in nature. The artist’s earlier work focused primarily on the pattern that recurs in roots, branches, veins, synapses, lightning, and river networks. While this pattern continues to play a part, the artist’s current work mostly utilizes the patterns of things in motion such as flocks of birds, schools of fish, swarms of bees, sediment swirling in water or seeds scattering in the wind.

Morganstern often combines these and other types of patterns in the same composition. A major theme explored by the artist is the inter-connectivity seen in nature. The artist finds these patterns intriguing because they suggest a unifying blueprint across myriad forms. “I further explore the unity in nature by fusing human, animal and botanical elements,” states the artist.

While Andrea Morganstern has explored these ideas in a variety of media, she currently works mainly in acrylic on canvas, as well as watercolor and gouache on paper. The artist often utilizes a circle at the center of the painting to evoke the sense of peering through a window into another realm. This can represent a range of possibilities from the microscopic to the macroscopic. The placement of the circle within a squarish shape is inspired by examples of sacred geometry that use this format, particularly the Indian yantra and Incan chakana.

Morganstern is particularly interested in the tension between structure versus fluidity, and seeks to create worlds of organic flowing imagery within distinct boundaries. The artist’s color choices are inspired by the vibrancy and luminosity of stained glass. Ceramic mosaics also inspire this work, ranging from ancient Greco-Roman to those of Antoni Gaudi. Andrea Morganstern is intrigued by how many small repeating forms - while having their own equally beautiful and important individual identities - can together form a larger whole that is more interesting and beautiful than the individual components.