4:44 p.m., Oct. 10, 2008----Renowned artist and educator Keith Morrison, who was guest speaker at this year's Paul R. Jones Lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 7, said artists who free themselves of cultural and aesthetic limitations in their work surprise themselves by making connections and relationships they never thought of before.

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Morrison, who discussed 34 of his paintings during the lecture and gave examples from his experiences, said an open-minded approach has been a part of his art. He also explained the thinking behind many of the pieces, including the use of carved wooden dolls to depict people.

Three of Morrison's paintings are in the exhibit, “Discursive Acts: African American Art at UD and Beyond,” now on display in the University of Delaware's Mechanical Hall galleries.

“They've served me well...as substitutes for people,” Morrison said of the dolls as he talked about Shadow Over Africa, a 1986 watercolor. “I often use real people, but then I get into trouble; people get too close. When I use the dolls, the surrogates, then there is a certain distance between the audience and the objects.”

Morrison said his abstract art often invokes his own experiences as well as social and cultural issues. He explained that Banana Republic, oil on canvas painting of discarded toy trains, partially peeled bananas, matchsticks and cigars, was his reaction to learning about a facsimile machine from Bolivia, a country he considered a banana republic.

Morrison said his choice of objects and characters, such as the cocktail glass, an olive, people dancing on a toothpick and a punch bowl, shown in Walk Like An Egyptian, an oil on canvas based on a song he heard on radio with the same title, was meant to create abstraction, play with sizes and cultural issues, an evolution from his early paintings that depicted contemporary events, including unrest on the streets of Detroit and Chicago.

“These have evolved into cross-cultural issues,” he said of his earlier interests. “They are issues to do with Egypt, there are issues to do with the U.S., and there are issues to do with music. The intersection of cultural confusion and cultural communication is something that is a part of a lot of my work. It's also a part of my life and it comes through in these things I do.”

Morrison said efforts to authenticate references can get in the way of creativity by forcing the artist to work with specifics and limiting the breadth of the work.

“Sometimes you just let your imagination free and it comes up with reality,” Morrison said. “Reality does not always make sense. Reality is not based on logic. Reality is not based on education. There is probably more ignorance running the world than education. I'm not saying that it's a good thing, but I'm saying that it's a real thing. I can't edit out ignorance from reality or superstition from prejudice. All of these things are part of my reality.”

Morrison said that while some of his art projects dark moods, it is not a reflection of his reality. “My mood is always happy,” he said. “It does not have to be biographical, you can paint anything you want. It does not have to be because you yourself feel that way.”

An artist, curator, art critic, professor and administrator, Morrison was born in Jamaica and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts.

He has exhibited his paintings and prints in solo shows and more than 100 group shows throughout the United States and abroad and was selected to represent Jamaica at the 1994 Caribbean Biennial in Santa Domingo and the 2001 Venice Biennale.

Morrison's works are part of the collections of such institutions as the Cincinnati Art Museum; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in Philadelphia; and the Jamaica Institute of Art.

Additionally, his work has been featured in several publications, and he has contributed catalog essays for such museums as the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the Getty Museum.

He has lectured widely across the United States at various institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute, the University of the West Indies and the Getty Museum, and was invited to give the commencement address of art at the University of California, Berkeley.

Morrison has a long career in academia as administrator and professor. Formerly the dean, he is currently a professor at the Tyler School of Arts at Temple University. He served as chairperson of the art department at DePaul University, associate dean of the College of Architecture and Art at the University of Illinois in Chicago, chairperson of the art department of the University of Maryland at College Park, dean of academic affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, dean of the College of Creative Arts at San Francisco State University, and dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Article by Martin A. Mbugua