Cole Morgan (New York, 1950)
Cole Morgan was born in 1950 in New York. In 1971 he received his
Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of New Mexico in
Albuquerque, after which he moved to Europe. For two years he visited
the Centro d'Arte Graffico in Florence (Italy), where he studied art
history and litography techniques. In 1973 en 1974 he was a pupil at De
Vrije Akademie in The Hague.
Although nowadays Cole Morgan
lives in Belgium, he has a close relationship with The Netherlands.
Already for more than twenty years he is a very succesful artist, not
only in the lowlands, but also in many other European countries and in
the US. In 2007, for example, exhibitions of his works were organized
all over the world: in Holland, Zürich, Seoul, San Francisco and New
York.
This is what Cole Morgan says about his works himself:
"To examine them at your leisure is to delve and discover, continually
peeling back the layers of composition, colour, text, scratches and
lines that are intentional as well as unintentional. Somewhat like
peeling an onion."
"On your visual journey, you will be
pleasantly teased. Teased because you will attempt to assign meaning
and direction to the various elements on the canvas, only to find you
have gone down a blind alley. Teased because you will find that texts
and associations you may think you have deciphered, were never there to
be deciphered in the first place."
"The shapes and lines and
small, insignificant placements and assignations, though seemingly
accidental, have been laid down with a serious degree of accuracy.
There are no 'accidents' in my compositions. I would categorize this
randomness as 'controlled spontaneity'. All these processes together,
when wielded with an eye for balance and a knowledge of knowing when to
stop, make the act of painting an enriching experience."