E. Melinda Morrison

E. Melinda Morrison is a story teller. Her stories are of diverse people and places with long histories and uncertain futures, and she tells it all in the language of oils and light and composition. Although her paintings have their foundation in the quotidian of daily events and experiences, she enhances and enlarges those slices of life and paints what she wants to see with a certain looseness and abstraction in shapes. Her colors are carefully paired with grays – never “color for color-sake,” rather color for the sake of the narrative. In her own words, she “enjoys telling the story” and revels in framing a climactic scene: “whether a humorous or an emotional moment, capturing a person in spontaneous expression is the ultimate glory for me in painting.”

As an extroverted artist, Morrison has always had the unfortunate tension of drawing energy from interaction with people, while needing to nourish and express her creative soul in solitude. As a young woman, her B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Tyler took a backseat to the corporate world for many years: advertising exec; graphic designer and art director of her own company; corporate recruiter.

Not surprisingly, she was recognized in national competitions for her print design and annual reports. But shortly after her move to Denver in 1994, the satisfied extrovert began to hear from the starving artist; she says she “felt like her soul was drying up”. An oil-painting class at the Art Students’ League of Denver rained water on that desert ground.