Colette Morey de Morand was born in Paris in 1934, to a French father and Ukrainian mother. Whilst she was an infant her family moved to Canada, where she was to spend her formative years.
Although she always had designs on being an artist, her mother made her take a science degree at the University of Toronto as a more ‘sensible’ option. Morey de Morand, however, was not to be deterred and not long after graduating she moved to New Zealand, first studying at Wellington University and later establishing a reputation for herself as a landscape painter. Whilst in New Zealand she met Clement Greenberg, the high priest of Abstract Expressionism, an encounter that could well have been significant in her shift in direction towards abstraction, which she was to explore for the rest of her career.
On separating from her first husband, Morey de Morand travelled overland through India and the Far East with her two young children, arriving in London in 1975, where she was to stay for the rest of her life – although she carried on showing in New Zealand, where her work continued to be highly regarded. She was soon ensconced in the London art scene – albeit the part of the scene that set itself against the prevailing fashion for Minimalism and Conceptualism. She had met Anthony Caro and his wife, the painter Sheila Girling, in New Zealand and they were to remain close friends throughout their lives. Both artists’ approaches at that time – loose, lyrical (even for Caro when working in heavy slabs of metal) – were to find confluences in her painting of the same period.
In the 1980s, Morey de Morand was part of a loose collective of artists working at the Berry Street studios in Clerkenwell, London and it was here that she met Paula Rego, who was to become a lifelong friend.
They would meet almost daily, often visiting other artists’ studios or gallery openings together – as well as providing mutual support during their own exhibitions. They were born within six months of each other; their husbands both died in 1988 (also within six months of each other); they were painters at a time when paint was out of fashion; and, of course, they were women trying to make headway in a world where male artists still held sway and recognition had to be earned twice-over.
Whilst Morey de Morand’s work was abstract and ethereal (before turning hard-edged in the 90s and 2000s) – and Rego’s paintings were irreducibly narrative and corporeal – the artists shared an interest in the metaphysical and art’s ability to access truths beyond the everyday world.
Rego often remarked that she had an inability to speak her mind, to speak the truth, hence her flight into storytelling. Morey de Morand seemed to be able to help her find expression, as can be seen in their correspondence consisting of cards, notes and invitations – and they exchanged very thoughtful gifts of their own artworks.
