“Beauty Surrounds Me” by Morgan Brooke
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Oil Pastel on Paper
I am an artist practicing primarily in all drawing and painting mediums. In my current work, I use oil and soft pastels, colored pencils, watercolor, and acrylic. My practice of joining weekly life drawing groups has also influenced my choice of media. I also work in mosaic, collage, and digital formats. My commissioned illustration works emerged from my fine art style that often illustrates and explores my own and other peoples’ stories and events. When I was a graphic design/illustrator and did publication and illustration work for local companies and non-profits, I loved interpreting someone else’s ideas and goals.
I always have a pencil in my hand ready to draw everything I see or doodle ideas that I can enlarge on. Through imaginative detail, color and pattern, I hope to evoke mythical visions, personalities and life stories and reveal inner hidden narratives. I’d also like to incorporate words and phrases as part of the images. My chosen work samples show portraits, mandalas, elaborate story “quilts” and figure studies. I continue to revisit or “update” my first biographical images I did to show emotional/mental healing process.
Everything in nature has a spirit – a vibration or “music” that can only be found by careful seeing. Choices and use of color, pattern, texture and layers of details reflect the energy and rhythms in all life. Symbolism, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, spirituality, seasons, change, and animals influence me. New Science and Physics reveal much of what I am trying to convey with my art. Creating connection and narrative is essential to my pieces, from the very complex to simple drawings.
Currently, oil pastels are my favorite media to draw abstract landscapes, imaginative picture biographies of friends, and other images from my life memories. As I move forward, I want to build a website showing my artwork and include written stories of my own mental
PROVIDED BY:
Avivo Artworks
Since 2004, Avivo ArtWorks, formerly Spectrum ArtWorks, has been working to support professional artists living with mental illness. Located at the Lighthouse, a Community Support Program in Minneapolis, the program meets its mission through a community-focused and recovery-based approach. Its multi-faceted art studio and programming assists artists at reaching and maintaining their artist-related goals such as making new art, connecting with other artists, and accessing exhibition and grant opportunities.
In addition to this, each year the program organizes a new exhibition that aims to meet its mission to challenge stigma and raise mental health awareness. In 2015, the program partnered with the Minneapolis Institute of Art to bring “In Conversation,” a residency and exhibition that featured 17 artists from the program. Each participant created a new piece of art that was in conversation with an object or artwork in the museum’s collection. In 2017, Avivo ArtWorks facilitated “The Big Picture,” a group exhibition that presented artwork that explored wellness in recovery through art. “To Really See,” opening August 2017 at the Hennepin County Library – Central Minneapolis, is Avivo ArtWorks first every traveling group exhibition. The show explores the medication-taking experience and will feature artwork from artists who use Avivo ArtWorks services and artists from across the state of Minnesota.