Tell us how you first became interested in creating art.
Art runs in my family, so I always had support to pursue art. My grandmother was a painter and her father, who
I knew, was a jeweler. My parents collect art from all over the world, and raised me overseas, so there was always a lot of inspiration around. I also enjoyed acting and theater growing up, and I found that I liked to paint large-scale. In college, at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, I was introduced to scenic painting, painting scenery and backdrops for the theatre. I painted backdrops up to 100 feet long and I loved painting on such a monumental scale. I worked as a scenic painter in California and Chicago for about two decades and studied at the Cobalt Studios school in White Lake, New York. My art continues to gravitate towards large-scale (around 24” x 30”) now that I am focused on portraits.
I like to make the viewer wonder about the subject and their life
Which artists or art movements have influenced you?
Alice Neel and Mary Cassatt inspire me. I'm influenced by their focus on women and children, Cassatt's depiction of light, and Neel's psychologically intense expressionism.
How would you describe your artistic style? What inspires you?
Alice Neel said, “I am a collector of souls." I find myself attracted to pieces that tell a little story. I like to make the viewer wonder about the subject and their life.
What is your favorite art accident? Did it change your perspective?
When I was a scenic painter, I was approached to do portraiture as part of the set for a TV show. I didn't get the job though because there was no portraiture in my art portfolio. I realized it was a gap in my body of work. Because of this experience, I decided to start doing portraiture and I fell in love with it!
What is the most important thing about art to you?
Art is a challenge for the artist as well as the viewer. The artist studies a subject so closely, working out how to express the shape of the subject in space. How to express the light hitting its angles and curves. The challenge is fun.
I think that is what is most important about art; it’s like figuring out a puzzle and then showing the solution to someone else (the viewer). Almost like an engineering challenge with multiple possible solutions. Humans learn by observing, and art is a challenge to observe a subject—both the artist observing and making the art, and then the viewer observing and analyzing the finished piece.
Some people like to do puzzles, I like to figure out how to draw someone’s face. It keeps my brain engaged and it’s fun and it occupies my mind.
How do you promote your art?
I take part in competitions and have won some awards. You can visit Light, Space, Time Gallery, and Ten Moir Gallery to view some of my winning pieces. I have a website at morganmstudio.com. I'm even experimenting with AI to promote my portraiture practice, like showing people how a large portrait might look in a living room or using video to describe the work. It's all experimental, and I'm trying to find the balance between authenticity and efficiency.
What is missing from the contemporary art market? What problems do you see in contemporary art right now?
I have only recently begun to wade into the fine arts market. My background is in painting backdrops for the performing arts. The performing arts are a collaboration of artists and technicians coming together to create something that has a hard fast deadline: the performance. The difference I would say, and something I will have to get used to now that I have started trying to market myself in the fine arts market, is the presentation and story that needs to surround a piece of fine art. In fine art, the art itself is the production that the audience is focused on, unlike painting for the performing arts in which the art falls to the background of the subject matter being performed on the stage.
What are your plans? What are you working on now?
I plan to continue to add to my gallery at morganmstudios.com and I hope to continue to have the opportunity to create more custom portraiture. I've been completing a series of portraits of my family members, my own kids (I have two daughters) and my nieces, at different ages. It's really challenging painting babies. They have such different proportions from adults, and studying the growth and transition of my daughters and nieces through their growth has been really interesting.
