Space Around a Porcupine: Morgan Bulkeley at Real Art Ways

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Space Around a Porcupine: Morgan Bulkeley

 

Curated by David Borawski, Real Art Ways presents paintings and sculptures by Morgan Bulkeley. 

From the Artist’s Statement:

“I try to make paintings that are beautiful, frightening and funny all at once, similar to The Theater of the Absurd, which assumes things are so bad that you can only laugh. I see in nature and in the best of humanity an incredible beauty; but I also see in our technology and aggression a will and ability to destroy that beauty, either actively or inadvertently. The refuse of our consumerism, wafting down our streets, caught in the twigs of trees in our deepest forests or swirling in giant gyres in the ocean, is a steady reminder of our growing and smothering effect on our only habitable planet. I paint to try to make people think of the fragility in which we exist.”

About the Artist:

Morgan Bulkeley was born in the Berkshires of Massachusetts in 1944. He was raised on a small farm in the town of Mount Washington, where his parents, both naturalists, raised many wild, orphaned animals. He graduated from Yale University in 1966 with a B.A. in English Literature. After a stint in the Coast Guard, he spent a year in Newark New Jersey, drawing and working with VISTA Programs. Subsequently he spent 14 years in Cambridge Massachusetts painting and sculpting. In 1985 he returned to his childhood home where he lives with his environmentalist wife Eleanor Tillinghast.

Click here to learn more about the artist.

Featured image: Peter, Four Morgans, oil on canvas, 2019

"The universe created in Morgan's images and objects is wild and nonsensical, mimicking that of our own world. His work seems to be as much about the concept of storytelling as it is about the story being told. If I believed in reincarnation, I would suggest Morgan is the current iteration of the epic Biblical painter, Hieronymous Bosch. "

Visual Arts Manager Neil Daigle Orians