Morris Graves: Paintings and Drawings between 1931 and 1996

Morris Graves: Paintings and Drawings between 1931 and 1996

Morris Graves is one of the first great Modern artists from the Northwest to be recognized nationally, and is often associated with artists of the Northwest School.

Born in Fox Valley Oregon in 1910, Graves spent his childhood in Oregon and Washington. He was intensely fascinated in nature, particularly birds and plants. He felt a deeply spiritual attachment to the natural world that remained an integral part of his life.

This show features works consigned from the Morris Graves Foundation. They encompass the artist’s total productive life, from drawings for his high school yearbook in 1931 to a piece from his final series of paintings. They range from annotated sketches of birds to large format multimedia works, with several works being shown publicly for the first time. They present a visual guide to the life and career of this intensely private artist of national renown.

His mid-career works were influenced by East Asian philosophy and mysticism, which he used it as a way of approaching nature directly, avoiding theory. Graves adopted certain elements of Chinese and Japanese art, including the use of thin paper and ink drawing. His painted birds, pine trees, and waves. Graves works, such as "Blind Bird" often contain elements of Mark Tobey, who was inspired by Asian calligraphy. Graves switched from oils to gouaches, his bird became psychedelic, mystic, en route to transcendence. The paintings were bold, applied in a thick impasto with a palette knife, sometimes on coarse feed sacks

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White Lotus Gallery opened in June, 1992, and from its inception has focused on art from Asia. Initially, the inventory was dominated by the contemporary Japanese print collection of founding partner Dick Easley.

The prints of Japan's leading 20th century artists remain an important facet of our collection, but from the beginning the dream of gallery director Dr. Hue-ping Lin was to provide a venue in the U.S. for China's contemporary artists, particularly printmakers. Her appreciation of the arts and contacts within Chinese art academies has permitted White Lotus Gallery to assemble one of the largest collections of contemporary Chinese prints in the US. These works, in all print media, range from realistic prints of the Suzhou landscape to abstract prints in the Zen tradition.

Although under represented and often unknown in the U.S., the work of many of the artists in the collection have been awarded prizes in national and international competitions, and have been collected by leading international museums, including the British Museum.

Our interest in Japanese prints is still very active. The collection includes the works of Sekino, Azechi, Watanabe, and Jacoulet, as well as many of the famous woodblock printmakers of the 19th century.

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