Having grown up hunting for unusual rocks and exploring deep ravines in the woods behind her childhood home, Morgan Mercer is a Twin Cities-based oil painter who still has a fascination for finding wonder in unexpected places. She starts each of her paintings by creating a hand-cut collage of black and white images. Then, she projects the collage onto a canvas and draws it. With each layer of paint, she interprets the imagery from the collaged scene by focusing on different shapes, lines, feelings or areas of negative space until the painting explodes in a mass of color, overlapping brushstrokes and energetic marks. Her work is a catalog of moments and scenes that encapsulate feelings of wonder, curiosity, adventure and discovery.