Raymond Morrow - "Beauty is Nothing"
ON EXHIBIT: June 2 – 26, 2004
Artist Reception on Friday June 4th, 6 – 10 PM
Viveza Gallery is pleased to present Beauty is Nothing, an installation of new oil paintings on canvas by Seattle artist Raymond Morrow and ME & me, an installation of terracotta ceramics by Seattle artist Terry Hecker.
About Beauty is Nothing | Artist's Statement | Write-up on Raymond Morrow and Beauty is Nothing | An Interview with Raymond Morrow
Freedom from scrutiny in a world obsessed by an unobtainable scale of perfection and beauty is the central concept in the works of “Beauty is Nothing”. Just what it means to be considered ugly or beautiful is an age old question. How one's life is affected by appearance is a mystery unique to the individual, yet no one is beyond constant scrutiny and judgment. From botox to extreme makeovers, people are more and more willing to do whatever it takes to reach their perceived idea of perfection - an ideal beauty that motivates some and repulses others, but none the less destroys us all. The paintings in “Beauty is Nothing” are an exploration of the desire to be accepted and the pulse within us to judge others so harshly.
Artist's Statement
by Raymond Morrow
"BEAUTY'S NOTHING/ BUT THE FIRST TOUCH OF TERROR/ WE'RE
JUST ABLE TO ENDURE/ AND WE ADORE IT SO MUCH/ BECAUSE IT SERENELY DISDAINS,
DESTROYS US." -Rainer Maria Rilke
In Beauty is Nothing, Raymond Morrow uses the human body to question the political and physical boundaries of freedom and discrimination in today's culture. These nudes, challenging the stereotypical ideas of beauty and the judgments place upon them are not realistic depictions, they are emotional expressions and, so, are necessarily often exaggerated to a point of gross distortion. The resulting psychopathology provides a transfixing and at times unpleasant mirror of contemporary life.
Full of pain, tenderness, fear and love, the reality that interests Morrow is one that's not supposed to exist. A myriad of deformed, multi-gendered, androgynous figures in a cornucopia of shapes and sizes invade canvases to confront and explore the relationships between beauty, sexuality, gender and love.
At a time in history when perception and identity are truly in flux in ever changing ways, Morrow chooses to magnify rather than cover-up perceived flaws. Done in a way that is so raw and so real, one would be hard pressed not to feel empathy toward these works of intensely personal yet universally human struggles. They strike the viewer at a gut level and don't let go.
Write-up on Raymond
Morrow and Beauty is Nothing
by Karla Freiheit
Raymond Morrow’s first exhibition of exclusively figurative paintings entitled “Beauty Is Nothing” is on display for the month of June at Viveza Gallery in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood.
Morrow grew up in Denver through the ninth grade and then his family moved to a small town near White Pass, Washington. Throughout his childhood, Morrow’s family visited art museums, but there was no one in his family who was an artist role model. Morrow moved to Seattle to continue his pursuit of an art education and earned his B.F.A. in painting and video from Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts. In school, Morrow also explored sculpture and furniture making.
In sync with his artistic growth, Morrow’s art historical sources change. He sees his current body of work, which has evolved over the last two to three years through hundreds of drawings, relating to painters such as Francis Bacon, Egon Schiele and Jenny Saville, while his earlier influences include Lucian Freud, Willem De Kooning, Dinos and Jake Chapman, and Vassily Kandinsky amongst many others. Morrow likes Bacon for his expressionistic yet unacademic style, and finds Saville’s work (large, fleshy self-portraits seen from an extreme angle) to be fascinating and beautiful in a disturbing way.
Morrow explains his fascination with artists’ portrayal of the morbid in figurative work and in his own paintings as a means of exploring how beauty goes along with aging and that human beings are not invincible—we are all only temporarily-abled and at any time could meet disaster and be left an amputee. His paintings are intended to communicate that things in life fade, that visual reminders of death, or memento mori, go hand-in-hand with reminders of life. Morrow’s work explores how, no matter what we look like, we don’t want to be judged, but we are anyway—there’s no escaping it, just like there is no escaping aging and death.
“Beauty Is Nothing” is being shown in conjunction with Terry Hecker’s show “Me and Me”, setting up an interesting dialogue between two artists working with the figure in very different ways. Yet, each artist’s work communicates instantly with the viewer through the universality of the human figure while allowing each viewer to interpret what it means to be human in 21st century America.
An Interview
with Raymond Morrow on Beauty is Nothing
by Karla Freiheit
I
met with artist Raymond Morrow on Friday, April 30, 2004, to talk about his
upcoming show of figurative paintings at Viveza Gallery, and to get to know a
little about him as an artist. Raymond answered all of my questions
thoughtfully, offering insight into how he thinks, lives, and works as a full
time studio artist. The following are excerpts from a conversation we had at
Cranium Cafe and Collectibles in Lake City.
[KF] Tell me about your thoughts on the automatic connection people have to figurative painting and its “instant” recognition.
[RM] With figurative painting, no matter how abstract it is, people can relate to it instantly. They either understand something about it, or, they are more curious to understand something about it, whereas often when people see an abstract or nonobjective painting, they don’t know where to go with it.
[KF] Tell me about your thoughts on the evolution of artists’ work vs. focusing on a consistent “theme and variation”.
[RM] Artists’ work should evolve. Of course you must delve into what you’re exploring, and that can take time, but if it lasts 10, 20, 30 years, simply because it has become comfortable, then it seems to me the growth has stopped. I don’t want to get stuck, find a niche and build a house around it, lock the doors and live happily ever after. No thanks.
[KF] Tell me more about your thoughts on the emphasis on technical ability and the goal of moving beyond technical wizardry.
[RM] Technical ability is a valid skill to have; but, if that’s all you have, then you’re a craftsman, not really an artist.
That was a big lesson for me when I graduated. In studying art there was significant pressure to be able to paint realistically. In one sense, it was how you were judged. Little by little, I grew away from that and now it feels okay to go back. I don’t really go for photorealism; I’d rather just see a photograph—unless there’s more content or more meaning behind it. I think there are many, many artists who have great technical ability, but not much more. I’m trying to create art with much more thought behind it. It is very concept driven work that ultimately, I hope, will work on visual, emotional and intellectual levels.
[KF] How much longer do you expect to be working on this particular body of work? You’ve got this show planned, you’re working toward getting it mounted—do you see that as closing that chapter and moving on or do you see yourself continuing in this mode? Does each painting mark a new step forward for you?
[RM] Yes, it seems to me that the road is pretty long in respect to my latest work; there’s much, much more to explore…the title of this show is “Beauty Is Nothing”…and it is also about freedom—there are so many other tangents that I’d like to deal with. I think it’s just the beginning; nowhere near completion. I’ll probably work on this for several more years at least.
[KF] What are your non-visual and/or non-artistic influences? Not so much where you get your ideas, because ideas come through research, but what do you do, how do you spend time? For example, in your statement you quote Rilke, a non-visual source.
[RM] Really I think everything I see and hear is an influence. It could be a poem, a dirty alley, the curve of a shadow, anything really. I don’t ever set out to become inspired or get ideas, they just pile up around me.
[KF] So how DO you live your life outside of your studio?
[RM] It’s a pretty boring routine—I read the newspaper, I check the news on the Internet. I people watch. I often just sit, watch and listen. I’m really a creature of habit, to some extent, though…
Because my partner lives in London, I travel there three to four times a year and that is a big part of my life. I usually go for three, four, five weeks at a time, and spend much of it sketching and exploring. The city alone is an amazing influence. Then I come back home…
[KF] Do you people watch when you’re in London?
[RM] That’s pretty much all I do and sketch and sit and read the papers, and watch people, and think, and visit museums and galleries and people watch there, too.
[KF] What do you think about reactions to your work?
[RM] If there’s no reaction, that’s bad. If you hate it, I’m fine with that…
[KF] What’s that saying? “Bad publicity is better is better than no publicity”, because at least you have a track record at that point…
[RM] And also, one person’s perspective is different than another’s and not everyone will like, for instance, this coming show. A lot of people won’t like it, won’t get it. (To paraphrase Warhol), you have to do things the average person doesn’t understand because those are the only good things…there’s a certain truth to that, I think, in the sense that, at the risk of sounding condescending, there are a lot of people who don’t want to explore art any further than what might look pretty over their linen sofa.
[KF] What do you think about your community of artists (here in Seattle)? I assume you run with artists, that you have artist friends.
[RM] I do, but…it’s hard for me to balance work and running with artist friends because sometimes I spend so much of my day making art, I don’t want to talk about it. Another aspect of that is I never show my work before it’s finished. Some friends think that is a really bad way of working, but it’s what I like. Before I start a painting, I process countless influences, I do sketches, and I talk to friends and family about my ideas. Then once it’s in my head…at some point I’ve got to say “stop”. Now it’s time to just do it. It used to drive me nuts when I would let people look at unfinished works only to have them say, “Oh, that’s great—you know what’d be neat, if that was blue over there,” or “you should paint black and blue roses under a gigantic rainbow flag. That would be very political”. What? I just hate it.
[KF] What, if any, are your studio rituals or routines?
[RM] I try not to have a routine. I don’t really paint nine to five, but I do, ideally, try to paint eight hours a day at least, but that could be doing two hours in the morning and then mess around for half the day and then paint from six to two in the morning. I don’t really like to get in the habit of a ritual/routine—it’s the amount of work that gets done, not when it gets done, for me, part of it is a guilty pleasure not having to live by a schedule, so why put myself into one? I’m not a big fan of early mornings.
I’m a very messy painter; I’m not organized, I have my brushes all over the place. Sometimes I wear a t-shirt so I can use it as a rag and I use it until it gets too encrusted to wear. I guess my routine is chaos. I like to get to a frenzy point; I love a deadline because I love just kicking back the Red Bulls…it’s a rush, even though I know it’s not that healthy for me.
[KF] What do people say about you having a “pedigree” from Cornish?
[RM] I’ve never had anyone ask. To me, it’s all about the work. Either it’s good or it isn’t.