Happiest birthday wishes to Ivan Morley (@ivanmorley)! Morley combines virtuosic craftsmanship, deep knowledge of the discipline of painting, and a committed sense of place, creating works that take on the medium’s major narratives even as they glorify its minor pathways. For 25 years he has made works that challenge expectations about how paintings should be made and what they should depict. He employs seemingly “lower” techniques and materials, such as embroidery and glass painting; at the same time, he is the author of a strange but immediately recognizable set of images and stylistic modes. These arise from remembered and misremembered histories related to California’s past. Morley works in series, some of which span the entirety of his career and are ongoing; each work represents a further distortion or abstraction of the narrative that gave rise to the series in the first place. Portrait of #IvanMorley: @elonschoenholz