Jason Taylor Morgan

Artist’s Statement

We should all be so surprised and so fortunate – painting came to me late in life, during Covid’s early days, at 66 years old. Retired, bored with Wordle and other distraction pursuits, and stuck halfway through working on my sixth novel, on a whim, that was really a sudden moment of knowing – I ordered acrylic paint, canvas boards and an easel from Amazon. I had never painted before. I wasn’t concerned with that. Something in me knew this was an opening of some kind and I’d better hurry and walk into it before it closed. I have always had a passion for leaping into the unknown.

I began to teach myself to paint. My heroes have always been writers, artists and musicians. My mother was a Classical pianist. Her influence on my creative mind and deep emotions is immeasurable. I experience life energetically – I feel everything. I write visually. I understand how the creative and strategic mind and abstract imagination work. Dyslexia has given me a love for spontaneity, improvisation and experiencing life with my feeling and intuitive senses. Writing novels in the first person, my mind can switch gears and see things and feel things beyond my own singular experience. I prefer depth over chit chat.

The first “serious” piece I painted – a small, simple, spontaneous abstract – looked pretty good. I was shocked more than surprised. Shocked because the piece just rose out of me from somewhere I had never experienced before, somewhere between instinct and magic. And it was much better than I thought it should be. Not surprised because many of the important things in my life – things I had never done before - have just come to me naturally. Can’t explain … I just know how to do them. There are many things I have no idea how to do. But painting - how I paint anyway - isn’t one of them. It’s an unaccountable gift. Thank the stars.

After six months of exploring my creative self and summoning what abstract elements wanted to rise out of me in acrylic paint, and rather than exploring figurative subjects, painting techniques, famous artist emulation, and color theory, I create my own universe of magical thinking and visits to the ethereal world.

I let go of using brushes and created my own painting method and spontaneous creation technique. Well within a year of my first explorations - and never for a second thinking I’d progress to actually selling art - I sold my first paintings to our cool local health food store. A few months later, I was selling artwork much quicker than I thought possible and was asked to be the Guest Artist and then a Resident Artist with our Cloverdale Arts Alliance Gallery. All this in less than a year’s time. My unexpected progression as an artist absolutely had a life of its own. It still does. I just hang on and go.

Three years ago, now, opening that Amazon box unleashed more than art supplies. It gave me more than a new creative passion. Art and abstract acrylic painting opened me up to much higher levels of abstract self-expression, deeper levels of self-awareness, a new usage of my inner eyes, an unpredictable dance partner relationship with creative spontaneity and risk. And where a novel can take me years to finish - my paintings provide deep and satisfying immediate gratification.

I travel to ethereal worlds and evolve as a person when I paint. I call my artwork “visual poetry.” My pieces capture elusive ethereal moments. I feel more a novelist, in my comfortable literary world, than a visual artist. And that’s what excites me. Every time I paint, I still feel the wonder of creation in producing unexpected, beautiful things. I still jump off the cliff without a clue of what will happen next in my paintings - and on my painting journey. But I am progressing, and I have faith. And that’s beautiful.

Born in 1955, a Literature & Writing major, Bard College, New York, 1977, I am an insatiable explorer of the unknown, an ever-journeying native Bostonian, having traveled seven years of my life before and after raising my magnificent daughters in Wellesley, MA. Now retired from three meaningful professional careers: marketing and analyst relations agency senior executive and agency president in the Technology Industry. Counselor for at-risk kids on a psych unit at a Children’s Hospital. Then a journey as an energy healer for emotional trauma, advanced consciousness teacher, and seminar leader. And throughout the last twenty-five years: author of five novels. (See my books on Amazon.) Just finishing my sixth and working on my seventh. jasontaylormorgan-author.com.

Now, at 70, I tutor gifted children in creative writing, have just begun my seventh novel, explore this new, wondrous passage as a visual artist, and serve as Gallery Co-Director and member of the Board of Directors at the Cloverdale Arts Alliance, Cloverdale, CA.

A resident artist with The Cloverdale Arts Alliance Gallery, with thirteen exhibits of my artwork to date, I live peacefully and happily in the delightful little city of Cloverdale, known for its dedication to the arts, in Sonoma County, Northern CA.