2011 Visual Artist John Morra
John Morra (b. 1962) was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and was raised and educated in Southern California. He received his bachelor of arts degree in English from Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, in 1985 and a bachelor of fine arts in printmaking from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1987. Graduate study brought Morra to New York City, where he received a master of fine arts degree from the New York Academy of Art in 1991. Since 2000, he has been a Visiting Instructor at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Washington, and at the Grand Central Academy in New York City. Exhibitions of his work have been featured in galleries and museums across the United States.
Widely regarded as a leading figure in the world of contemporary American realism, John Morra continues the tradition of realist still-life painting with carefully composed arrangements of ordinary objects, but he also expands the genre by depicting machine parts and everyday junk, which he transforms into a vision of order, clarity, and beauty. Inspired by great painters of the past, particularly Chardin, he painstakingly arranges his still-life objects in his studio, makes careful painted sketches and drawings, and then paints from life. In his formal yet innovative compositions, Morra produces tensions between perspectival illusion and flatness, makes superb use of color and tone to enhance the contrasts between simple and complex textures, and fills his designs with a tactile presence of light. He paints with an almost obsessive precision, resulting in a body of work that, while grounded in the past, is refreshingly dynamic, visually stimulating, and clearly of the twenty-first century.
Visit John Morra’s Web site at www.johnmorrapainting.com.
John Morra’s work will be displayed on campus throughout the festival. Additionally, John Morra will discuss his artwork with Cathy Kimball, Executive Director, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art at a Café Conversation on July 23 at 11:45 a.m., followed by a reception, both of which are free and open to the public (July 23).