 E-mail Story Print Friendly
|
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Inside/Outside Man
By David Steinberg
Journal Staff Writer
J. Chris Morel prefers direct, simple language, regardless of the subject.
When it comes to describing his work, Morel calls himself a landscape painter, though some publications and galleries have referred to him as a plein-air artist.
Plein-air?
"It's painting outside and learning your craft," Morel said in a phone interview from his home in Vadito, near Taos.
"It's a descriptive term but it's a marketing term, mainly used by galleries and brokers trying to sell paintings. They use it to put a different spin on things."
In fact, he reduces his artistry in oil to the simplest of terms: "I'm a painter. I paint outside, inside."
When Morel moved to the Taos area from Austin in 1994, he was working outside about 75 percent of the time.
"I knew that if I had to paint snow, I had to see the light, get a true reading of the value, the temperature. It was a necessity, and exciting," he said.
"But I've come back inside the majority of the time. I've learned enough on location to be able to be accurate in the studio where I'm just working from reference material" such as photographs he would take on location.
Morel may paint in Utah or California or Arizona, but locations in northern New Mexico are the settings for most of his art.
"It's where things spring from," he said. "I can get the majority of my year's output in a 50-mile radius (of home)."
Recently, he drove to Anton Chico and Trementina in search of subjects, bringing with him a small portable easel, canvases, boards, brushes, paints and thinners. In Anton Chico, he painted a house next to a big tree with bright yellow leaves. It was framed against the shadow side of the adobe, he said.
"I met the neighbor, an older gentleman. It's kind of a whole experience. You meet people. They tell you about the history. It was just fun," Morel said.
That work will be one of about 30 paintings of all sizes he will exhibit at Weems International Artfest next weekend at Expo New Mexico. He has been showing at Artfest for almost 10 years.
Morel will be one of about 270 exhibitors from 27 states and England. They will show, for example, paintings, sculpture, pottery, glass, jewelry, wearables, toys and home accessories.
Morel, 51, pursued landscape painting because, as he put it, "That's what gets me excited about creating."
Growing up in Mount Airy, Md., one of the things he loved doing was gazing out at the farms, fields and fence lines. His parents bought him art supplies because he was always drawing and painting. "It's always been visceral," he said.
They knew, and he knew, that if he went to college he would study art. Which he did, attending Towson State University. While there Morel also played in a band. He's still a guitarist and singer who has played rock, country and blues with a small group in Taos area bars.
He started out painting watercolors in 1980 in Austin. But since 1988 he's been painting with oil.
"I like the richness of it. I like the reaction to the way it feels going on the canvas and the flexibility of it. You can change things," Morel said. "Watercolor was so stressful. ... I'm going back to it but I'm not leaving oil."
Morel moved to Taos with his family after realizing that so many Texans were heading there and to Santa Fe to buy their artwork.
A few friends from Austin opened studios in Taos, and one told him he should come out.
"We put everything in a truck and took everything out of savings for the first and last month (rent) on a house and studio," he recalled.
"We were broke just that fast. We said this had to work. It seemed like failure was not even a possibility because we had no money to make it back."
He had spent about five years on the road marketing the art in a gallery he owned in Taos. The gallery did well.
He has work in the "Minatures and More" exhibit that's up now at the Albuquerque Museum and shows at the Brazos Fine Art in Taos and Gallerie Gabrie in Pasadena, Calif.
He has shown in the annual Western art exhibit at the National Cowboy Museum Hall of Fame and at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Okla. And in 2007 he won Best of Show, Golden Thunderbird Award at the "Maynard Dixon Country Invitational" in Utah.
Morel has already begun planning for a one-man exhibit at Taos' Millicent Rogers Museum. The exhibit is scheduled to open in September 2011.
"It's the biggest show of my career. We're projecting 50 pieces. There will be a companion book," he said.
Over the next 18 months, Morel is planning to focus on creating paintings almost exclusively for this show.
Features at Weems Artfest will include a Children's ArtSMart and organizations offering opportunities for patrons to adopt dogs, cats and house rabbits. There also will be educational presentations on wolves, hawks and prairie dogs.
A silent auction will be held all three days. Beneficiaries are the Golden Apple Foundation of New Mexico, the Nancy Floyd Haworth Breast Cancer Foundation and Special Programs of the Youth Assistance Foundation.
If you go
WHAT: Weems International Artfest
WHEN: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Nov. 15
WHERE: Manuel Lujan Building, Expo New Mexico
HOW MUCH: $5 per day per person, $1 seniors discount; children 12 and under free. On Saturday $1 discount for anyone with a copy of his or her Comcast bill.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will receive the Outstanding Arts Patron Award at 7 p.m. Friday. The presentation is open to the public.
| We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. |
|
|
