“Art and nature are mind’s Environment within which we can detect the essence of man’s Being and Purpose.”
– Morris Graves
Associated with the Northwest Mystics and influenced by both Western and Asian art, Morris Graves was a lyrical painter, defined by his quiet, spiritual demeanor and dedication to his craft. Largely a self-taught artist who helped to found the Pacific Northwest School of Painting, he was best known for his nature paintings depicting birds, flowers, and small animals. Born in 1910, Graves dropped out of high school to take up work as a seaman with his older brother. Together, they took a number of trips to China and Japan, where Graves was first introduced to Oriental art. Upon returning to the US, Graves roamed around the country, finally settling in Texas with his aunt and completing high school at the age of 22. It was there he started to paint for the first time.
His trips to the Far East not only influenced his art, but they also altered his view of the world. A highly spiritual man, Graves began a lifelong study of Zen Buddhism in the early 1930s. He believed that a painting was only powerful if the observer was able to see through it to a deeper meaning. He regarded painting as a spiritual activity and, like the Abstract Expressionists, considered to process of painting to be almost more important than the finished piece. What set him aside from many of his contemporaries was his conviction that the idea behind a work of art should take priority over artistic technique.
Several of Graves’ paintings were included in the 1942 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1947, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to Hawaii where he studied at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. He traveled around Europe, Japan, Mexico, and eventually bought a house in County Cork Ireland. In the mid 1960s Graves returned the U.S. where he purchased a large track of redwood forest land, and developed a home near a lake on this property in northwestern California.
While his fame in the United States started to fade after the 1950s, his later work was powerful and well received internationally. Morris Graves died on May 5th, 2001, and his home and studio have since become an artist’s retreat. A portion of his artworks are at the Graves Museum of Art, located in Eureka, California. Other of his pieces are in the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian, the Huntington Library, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and many other museums and institutions. A mysterious man, who would sometimes describe his animal paintings as ‘self-portraits,’ Graves gifted the world with paintings that truly spoke to nature’s beauty and vibrancy.
Written by Kira Romano