East debuts “Nocturne” paintings in North Charleston

Women drift through dreamlike waters in Morgan Serreno East’s latest exhibition, Nocturne, on view  May 16 and 17 at the Park Circle Community Building in North Charleston.

East’s latest series is composed mostly of black-and-white oil paintings on large birch panels. Flowing dresses and long hair obscure facial features, emphasizing the artist’s goal to create work in which viewers can see themselves.

The series continues East’s exploration of the relationship between humans and nature — a recurring theme in her artwork since she left a career at Amazon to pursue art full-time in 2023. 

“Water has always served as a central theme in my work,” East said. “I like how water creates this more abstract world — a place that’s expressive, emotional … it’s almost like a dream world.”

Taking notes from Wyeth

After working for almost 16 years in the corporate world, East now paints full-time in a spacious, sunlit studio in North Charleston’s Navy Yard. Though she remembers always drawing and painting, she set her passions aside after college to pursue a more “realistic” career path. In 2019, she returned to painting in earnest, honing her skills in oil and completing her first full series. Those earlier works — women in natural settings — laid the foundation for her current practice.

“I visited a couple of local farms, and they just let me hang out and photograph them,” she said of her first body of work. “I made paintings based on that, heavily influenced by Andrew Wyeth — I wanted to create these quiet, still moments, humans interacting with the world around them.”

East’s work evokes the emotional solitude of Wyeth’s masterpiece “Christina’s World.” Like the central figure reaching toward a distant farmhouse in that painting, East’s underwater women inhabit isolated, psychological landscapes. The symbolic meaning of water in her work, she said, has evolved over time and is open to interpretation.

“Some people have looked at my paintings and said, ‘Why do you paint people drowning?’” East said. “There are people with a fear of water, and I get that. But for me, I’m creating them from a place of comfort and healing. Even if some of them feel chaotic, it’s about coming back up — about overcoming obstacles.”