“Magnolia spring bouquet” (1981) painting by morris graves
I
On The Lake
The mystic painter Morris Graves and his reclusive life in Humboldt By Bob Doran Excerpts and images from Morris Graves: Selected Letters, edited by Vicki Halper and Lawrence Fong, used by permission of University of Washington Press opposite Jacket photo “Morris Graves with a Tuning Fork” by Dorothy Norman, circa 1955, from the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Art
14 North Coast Journal • Thursday, April 4, 2013 • northcoastjournal.com
n January of 1965 the visionary painter Morris Graves wrote a letter to an old friend in Seattle:
I am now, at last, buying the forest tract of land — near Eureka — which is where I will build a studio and settle. It is a 380-acre tract of virgin forest surrounding a five-acre lake. The forest is magnificent old-growth redwood and white fir and spruce and all the other Pacific forest plants I love to live with, and the little lake is filled with miniature islands which grow miniature salal and blue huckleberry and dwarfed spruce, etc.
Not long after Graves wrote to his mother, Helen: Mother dear - This is just a note in haste to say that on Wednesday the final papers were signed and the new deeds recorded. It’s a terrible tussle to buy something that’s not for sale, and it’s taken three years — as you know — to get the owners to believe that they did want to sell.
He was feeling ecstatic a few months later when he wrote his friend Richard Svare: The land purchase [is] finally signed and sealed, and I am full of joy! Full of tears of joy! Full of joyous tears of joy! The forest lake is unspeakably beautiful, and I can hardly wait for you to see it so that you’ll know so too and know that it has been waiting since the beginning of the emergence of California from the sea for me! Untouched! Undisturbed! Unspeakably serene. Only seeing it (and me cool and calm as rain-freshened moss) will dispel your uneasiness and worry about if it’s right that I have bought it to educe its latent beauty and still look as though it had never been touched by anything but bird’s feet and deer’s toes and raccoon’s tiptoes! … The eight-by-fourteen-foot cabin — in a dark grove of trees by the lake’s shore — is finished. The mile-long road through the forest is finished. I have made a huge raft to paddle about on the lake to groom the little islands and prune out the dead twigs and branches. The climate here is eternal autumn. The sky clears at night sometimes, but the Lake is half obscured by mist all day. I
can hear only bird songs and the soughing of the trees if a summer breeze stirs them and the distant foghorns groaning on the sea coast.
The visionary artist Morris Graves, acclaimed as one of the major figures in American art in the mid-20th century, had found his final home. The enigmatic painter spent the last 30 years of his life in Humboldt and died here, but a scant few knew him. He was almost invisible. By design, he lived a reclusive life dedicated to painting and working in his garden, shunning visitors. A new book, Morris Graves: Selected Letters, takes a deeper look at his seclusion, how he chose Humboldt and how he felt about his art. Some of his correspondence with friends, family and associates is reprinted here. “I paint to evolve a changing language of symbols with which to remark upon the qualities of our mysterious capacities which direct us toward ultimate reality … to verify the inner eye,”
Graves wrote Museum of Modern Art curator Dorothy Miller in 1942, when his work was first shown there. “I find painting a relief from the overwhelming pressure of realization. I shout to relax — I paint to rest.”
Born in 1910, the sixth of eight boys, Graves grew up in the Seattle area, watching birds and learning the names of wildflowers. His life has been chronicled in Deloris Tarzan Ament’s Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art and other sources that outline his nomadic ramblings as well as his search for a permanent home. Graves dropped out of high school after his sophomore year, got a job on a ship heading east and explored Japan, China and Manila. He was particularly taken with Japanese aesthetics. He returned to Seattle in his 20s to begin what he saw as his life’s work: being an artist. Bearded, lean and lanky, at 6 foot 4, he cut a striking figure. In 1933, he took top honors at an annual contest at the Seattle Art Museum with a painting of a swan. In all the years that followed, Graves never married. He wrote fond and exuberant letters to male friends. But Graves was a man of his time, and throughout his long life he didn’t speak publicly about his sexuality.