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WORK
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“In a Silent Way was made in two main phases (one contemplated darkness- the other –light). Completed in 2003, its origins are founded in the process of recalling; the past as actual and emotional landscape; painting for me is often born of the act of remembrance; the physical, natural, and psychic interlinked. Motion and the motion of the world in a state of constant flux is one which intrigues me: I desire to create the moment as sensation rather than record, painting is consciousness concretized.
In addition to natural energy (land, weather, etc.) and its symbolic possibilities, it is music that often accompanies the act of painting. The Catalan painter Tapies has spoken of the fact that when individuals consider visual art, they do so from an ‘I THINK’ point of view, yet when those same individuals consider music they do so from an ‘I FEEL’ point of view.
Painting and music meet in the unwordable.”
Born in Cambridge, England Jeremy Morgan studied at Oxford, Ruskin School of Drawing and of Fine Art, and later received an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts from the Royal Academy in London. In 1985 he was awarded the prestigious Harkness Fellowship. This provided him with the opportunity to come to the San Francisco Art Institute where, after several years, he was appointed professor and later chair of the painting department.
The influence of the British landscape movement is evident, but not alone in his work as he became interested in American painterly styles such as the Abstract Expressionist movement. Here he began to merge the romantic landscape and the gestural brushstroke. Then began his travels to mainland China to further investigate his interest in judo and the martial arts along with Chinese countryside and landscape paintings. One can notice the traditional divisions of foreground and background are left behind. The experience is one of pure energy or ch’i.
The ethereal quality of Morgan’s highly layered canvasses is balanced with vivid colors and abstracted detail that give the viewer the sense of total immersion. It can also be an idea of absorption, bathing in color, and escaping the limits of the body. Working and living in California, Morgan’s work embraces the aesthetic of internal expansion.
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