Artist, academician, art critic, author Keith Morrison (b. 1942) is a man of unparalleled talents whose artistic range covers both abstraction and figuration. Jamaican born, Morrison was exposed to both traditional art and the larger global art community; in the United States he studied figure drawing, painting, and printmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, basing his style of abstraction on geometric forms, music, and geography. Subsequently influenced by political events, emotionally charged situations, and cross cultural sources, he then turned to figurative art, becoming "a painterly storyteller."
Through selected paintings and informed text, Renee Ater introduces us to this master artist, whose attention to detail, ethnicity, humor, color, and the sacred and the secular captures the essence of a fantastical imagination.
Renee Ater is Associate Professor of American Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the author of "Keith Morrison".