Kathleen Morris | Allegories, Dreams & Symbolism

The notion that art i s still capable of utteri ng feeling of any ki nd has become, in many i nstances, an alien attri bute i n recent art.

Thi s made apparent over and ov er again by the enormous glut of abject work repeatedly shown i n the v arious Bi ennials of recent years. The painti ngs of Kathl een Morris function i n a different w ay, on another level ; and – one would hope – in a more optimi stic manner. Her images are about feelings, not concepts. She is an inner-directed arti st – a phrase I like to use w hen speaking of those w ho are less consumed by the rhetoric of the art world media and more focused on thei r ow n concerns. Morris delivers a message that i s conscious of the signifyi ng power of the image. Herei n lies the tension that evokes beauty – the reposi tory of signs broken to pieces by the sheer will of creative i ndulgence.

- Robert C. Morgan Ph. D., New York, (2001)

KATHLEEN MORRIS | GUARDIAN | OIL ON LINEN | 84 X 108 INCHES

KATHLEEN MORRIS | GUARDIAN (DETAIL) OIL ON LINEN | 84 X 108 INCHES

There has been much talk about the exploitive male gaze at the naked female body - the Guerrilla Girls once sai d that the only way a female arti st could exhibit in a museum was as a naked odalisque painted by a male arti st - but i n Morris's work, w e see a w oman's gaze at the naked female body. M orris's bodi es are as erotic – seductive - as any a male artist might paint. But - and I think thi s i s crucial - she is not as emotionally passive as she often is in male renderings, w here her body usually matters much more than her spi rit.

- Donald Kuspit, New York

KATHLEEN MORRIS | NIGHT CYCLE | OIL ON LINEN | 65 X 85 INCHES

But i t i s woman's humanity that i s particularly mysterious to Morris.

Hers i s an i ntensely i ntroverted art, and her numerous pictures of women are all self-representations, i n principle if not i n pictorial fact. They convey her sense of herself - her sense of being a woman - if at an i magi native remove. I t i s woman's body and woman's feelings that are at issue i n her art, and they are her body and her feelings.

- Donald Kuspit, New York

KATHLEEN MORRIS | FERRYING OIL ON LINEN | 72 X 48 INCHES

Odilon Redon has painted faces like thi s, if not with the same technique and physicali ty. I am suggesting that Morris i s a Symbolist artist wi th the gift of "transcendental emotivi ty," as the cri tic G. Albert A urier said. Like the Symbolists, M orris deals with the "formidable unknown," as Aurier called i t. Hers i s a "suggestive art," to use Redon's term, dealing with the "subjective world," and like all such art "i t contai ns a treasure of dreams," at once "grandiose, delicate, subtle, perv erse, seraphic." I ndeed, M orri s's handling i s at once grandiose and delicate-not unlike that of Gustav e Moreau, another Symboli st.

- Donald Kuspi t, New York Psychoanalytic Art Critic

KATHLEEN MORRIS | NO KINGS, NO QUEENS OIL ON LINEN | 90 X 66 INCHES

“Where i s the beauty? Where I must will wi th all my will ; w here I want to love and peri sh that an image may not remai n a mere image.”

– Nei tzsche

KATHLEEN MORRIS | SANCTURARY THROUGH TIME OIL ON LINEN | 90 X 60 INCHES

Indeed, her faces suggest simultaneously the heights of consciousness to which the human spirit can rise and the depths of suffering to which it can sink. Her fantasies - dream pictures - convey the strangeness and horror of being human, particularly a woman.

Many of her women seem on the verge of going mad, as though their own beauty and desirability had distracted them from the possibilities of identity, and the few men she depicts seem like lost souls. Yet the rich atmosphere of each work seems to place the figure on a higher plane of existence, redeeming it. Both an allegorical presence and an individual in a particular mood, it becomes transcendental by virtue of the atmospheric space in which it is located .

- Donald Kuspit, New York

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KATHLEEN MORRIS | PENSIERO| OIL ON LINEN | 77 X 89 INCHES .

Morris's handling i s at once grandiose and delicate - not unlike that of Gustave Moreau, another Symbolist. Pi erre Bonnard said that the most striking aspect of Redon's work is "the blendi ng of two almost opposi te features: a v ery plastic substance and a very mysterious expression." The same i s true of Morris's work. Hers i s an art that retreats from everyday reality i nto fantasy i n order to di scover w hat i s deepest and most complex i n subjective life - i n order to experience the mystery of being human.

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- Donald Kuspi t, New York

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KATHLEEN MORRIS | SIGNS OF LIFE | OIL ON LINEN | 77 X 89 INCHES

KATHLEEN MORRIS | INHERITANCE OIL ON LINEN | 25 X 19 INCHES

These paintings are alive with synaptical charges of paint, with marks and gestures, and “accidental� encounters with form that reverberate from mind to body and from body to canvas. Within the process of her attenuated, painterly strokes and her intense manipulation of the dense color field, Morris begins to discover her heads. They emerge less out of the void than out of an intensity of perception that gives full range to the multitude of expressions, ranging from erotic desire to hallucination, from agony to joyful abandonment.

- Robert C. Morgan Ph. D., New York

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KATHLEEN MORRIS | PARADE| OIL ON LINEN | 73 X 85 INCHES

I could only think of one antecedent . . . the sometimes harrowing, yet mystical personages of the Norw egian pai nter Odd Nerdrum.

Could it be the emergence of a new metaphysics in art? A transi ent strategy of being i n a fragmented postmodern world?

Is i t inappropriate to consider that maybe the most radical procedures and i nnovations in art emerge from tradi tions that are al ready know n – tradi tions that w e assume to be the case, but hav e not been effectively realized?

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- Robert C. Morgan Ph. D., New York

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KATHLEEN MORRIS | NUMBERS | OIL ON LINEN | 75 X 79 INCHES

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The recognition of beauty in works of art does not come directly. I t rev eal s itself at various oblique angles. I t takes ti me to absorb.

Beauty requi res a certain receptivi ty related to the conjugation of mind and body. I n contrast to beauty, glamour comes at us di rectly. I t hi ts us i n the eye. Glamour is the instant effect that passes for “beauty” i n today’s hyper-mediated w orld filled with narcissi stic desire.

Cri tics may try to make distinctions between the tw o – beauty and glamour – but the differences are usually subjective. I n some ways, the subjective language of critics parallels the concerns of arti sts.

The critic enters i nto a discourse that i nvolves not only the effects of beauty, but al so the arti st’s i ntentions and the social context that surrounds those i ntentions. But like any area of cultural research that hov ers between the alchemy and the media, the rul es of cri ticism are nev er fixed. They are constantly being altered – transformed – in the presence of discovering new work. Si gni ficant art aw akens us to i deas that lie outside the boundaries of preestablished cri teria.

= Robert C. Morgan Ph. D., N ew Y ork

KATHLEEN MORRIS | SON OF GRACE | OIL ON LINEN | 93 X 77 INCHES

KATHLEEN MORRIS | UNTITLED OIL ON LINEN | 91 X 73 INCHES

“I am always tryi ng to paint Abstract Expressioni sm,” Morris said, “but they turn into heads very rapidly.” I pondered that statement for a moment and decided it was true. I t w as true! The surfaces of her paintings resemble the strokes, marks, and dribbles from the New York School . Yet Morris has produced somethi ng anathema to these painters by evolving her ow n style of idiosyncratic realism.

- Robert C. Morgan Ph. D., New York

KATHLEEN MORRIS | REASON OIL ON LINEN | 61 X 55 INCHES

Morris talks about the “primitive need” of her body to make gestures and the “metaphysical aspect of time and space” that she believes i s inscribed in these w orks. A t the same time, she wants “to get beyond the physical” w hich means to get beyond the li teral aspect of representation i n order to move, wi th Aristotle, i nto the realm of the metaphysical . She likes “big gestures” because they help to alleviate the burden of obsessiv e detail and thereby to offer a more generalized account of human exi stence through her vivid anthropomorphic imagination.

Morris w ants to give us a lingeri ng, pul sating representation of the soul , purloined from the oblique reservoir of memory. Thi s is the human condi tion that she so carefully observes i n gathering the raw material for her work.

- Robert C. Morgan Ph. D., New York

KATHLEEN MORRIS | MATHEMATICS OIL ON LINEN | 87 X 67 INCHES

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KATHLEEN MORRIS | VOLCANO HEAD MONOPRINT | 36 X 28 INCHES

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KATHLEEN MORRIS | TOWER OF DESRUCTION MONOPRINT | 58 X 43 INCHES

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