Jason Taylor Morgan

Artist’s Statement

Painting came to me late in life, at 66 years old - an unexpected gift during Covid’s long isolation. I woke one day in 2021 and felt compelled to buy acrylic paint, canvas boards and an easel. Author of five novels, and a poet in my younger years, but having never painted before, I gave myself free rein to paint in abstract whatever came to mind in whatever way it wished to express itself. Visual instinctive, ethereal, and emotional stream of consciousness journeys, experiences and stories in acrylic paint. Awkward with paint brushes, I discovered my own very freeing “brushless” painting technique - I call “reversaling.”

Within months of my first painting attempts, I was selling original 5 x 7in. art cards, each titled and signed. Progressing to more serious painting and selling larger pieces within a year, the Cloverdale Arts Alliance Gallery invited me to be Guest Artist for the November 2022 Art Exhibit. And to become a Resident Artist soon after. I was on my way to a wonderful and unexpected late-in-life career.

I distribute acrylic paint in endless varying amounts, ways, and configurations on a flat surface, canvas boards lying on a countertop, and lower the paper into the paint. Mixing in various amounts and types of gloss medium to achieve my textures and layers, with my hands - I blotch, dab, angle, glide, touch, spin, yank, streak, drown, mush, rub - delicately, boldly - somehow knowing exactly what I want to do. Everything is in the moment, improvised spontaneous creations. Some kind of sixth sense takes over and my inner eyes can see through the paper and tell my hands where to go. (Not really, but that’s the feeling.)

Then, or not, I add primary gestures, aftereffects, additional ideas, making it up as I go. Each piece telling its own ethereal story. Not short on ideas, and a passion for immediate gratification, I work quickly, often twenty or more 5 x 7in. paintings per sitting. Six or seven 9 x 12 in., or two or three 11 x 15in. About 50% of them gallery-worthy keepers. Others - quality unframed rack paintings or art cards. 10-15% I rip up and use for collage.

I don’t know why I could suddenly paint one day, in my late 60s, having never painted before. I’m still a little taken aback that I create professional artwork people enjoy and purchase. That’s what makes it so special - that magic of an unknown talent just bursting for you to find it, and you never would unless you explored yourself at a synchronistic moment, with intuition, instinct, and abandon.

Following abstract expressionism, my paintings flow with movement and soulful energy as visual representations of feelings, longings, emotions, visions. The stories I tell in acrylic suggest the transformative power of magical thinking. Metaphorical snapshots. Visits to the ethereal world.

“I paint what comes to me spontaneously in the moment, like performing at a poetry slam. My goal is to open your imagination and touch your inner eye, your senses, your emotions, your soul. And to inspire you to let go of literal thought and literal interpretation and feel the colors, the visuals, the emotions, the deeper sensory, organic experiences. As a novelist and poet, very often the titles are as crucial to the painting’s identity as the paint in a harmony of dissimilar mediums. The titles give the paints a deeper soul. I call my artwork “visual poetry.”

Preferring to follow my own instincts and imagination rather than seek instruction, I love that my artwork has no direct influences other than what comes to me in the moment.

I am stirred by the magnificence and magic of color. Colors of the natural world, the colors of the Impressionists, the colors I see in my mind. I am inspired by imagery in poetry and literature. By small moments in everyday life. By visions, longings, dreams. By flowers, waters, woodlands. By clouds and cloud patterns. By emotive music. By beauty. By the subconscious. By the ethereal world.

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. 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 those years: author of five novels, (see my books on Amazon), and having just finished my sixth.

Now, almost 70, I tutor gifted children in creative writing, and explore this new, wondrous passage as a visual artist.

A resident artist with The Cloverdale Arts Alliance Gallery, and Co-director, 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.