Every nuance of paint texture worked as an image.

Lyrical Abstraction shares similarities with Color Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism, especially in the freewheeling usage of paint texture and surface.

He seems to take special inspiration from both Ernst's slightly stuffy collages made from cut-up 19th-century engravings and his fascination with paint texture and dense foliage.

But stylistically, the brush strokes and the paint texture dictate that it should be a Stuart.

The earliest one shown is "Untitled" (circa 1930), a playful, brilliantly colored abstraction in which a raised surface is achieved by careful manipulation of paint textures.

The best - including "Unbelievable Oppression," "Three Women Dancing," "Whimsey" and "Woman With Chili String" - are populated by swaying, wafting figures whose animation is very much a matter of the artist's glowing, subtly mixed colors and carefully differentiated paint textures.

The images' zoom capability allows for close-up views of paint texture and fine detail.

The lighting is adjusted to throw paint texture into relief and to bring out patches of bright color, like the ocher-and-rose sky in the hunting picture "Coming to the Call."

Nearly every aspect of his images recalls some other artist, except perhaps his carefully orchestrated paint textures.

Morris's use of colour was original and his paint texture distinctive at once in its richness, its simplicity, and its tactility.