After an unexpected and protracted (and quite salacious!) intermission, RUSCHWOMAN is back with the gallery’s nascent interview series Curiosity Only Strengthened the Cat. We celebrate the start of 2024 by interviewing one of our favorite people: venerated artist Morgan. Just this past week, Morgan opened a solo exhibition at Chicago's Engage Projects, that continues through March 16, 2024.

Recently relocated to Chicago after retiring from thirty-something years of teaching in the Department of Art, University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (a position that itself followed on a decade and a half maintaining a studio, raising a family, and teaching in Greenville, North Carolina), Morgan continues a studio practice committed to invention and experimentation across painting, drawing, print, and related media.

Since the late 1970s, Morgan’s paintings—a category I here use rather expansively, following the lead of his work to also include draftsmanship, collage, and other mixed media approaches to complex perceptual experiences of surface—are psychological probes, unanswered questions, riddles in retreat from language-based solutions, wrestling, groping, plunging into inquiries posed through sumptuous materialities and the sensational detections of such through self conscious observations of color, pattern, shape, mark, layer, and other latent tools that were smuggled into modernism from a global array of decorative, abstract, and craft traditions. In Morgan’s process, these cultural artifacts are further loosened from a particular status to operate instead as a sensor array and an enchanted mirror and a cognitive map and a comportment all the more labyrinthine.





Scanning the above notations, it’s apropos that Morgan’s paintings prompt lists and commas and conjunctions. While medium, texture, scale, and method have fluctuated across years of Morgan’s experimental pivots and reinventions, the structural matrix of the layer remains the consistent move—within his art, and likewise within the project of painting, the analysis of consciousness, and a shrewd assessment of societal delineations. Whether craggy with thick, all-over paint applications onto monochrome-adjacent square panels of the late 90s or the luminous diagrammatic entanglements drafted in recent years (not to mention many other periods, groupings, and tests), there is a particular thrill in noticing visual information observable in the makeup of the painting only to locate thresholds where one layer passes behind another. Seen and unseen, revealing and hiding, public and private, interior and exterior, unconscious and conscious: each artwork in Morgan’s prolific oeuvre is a record of the artist’s own navigation of these zones with what appears as a tireless curiosity in pursuit of wonder reflected back upon his wandering.

The stations of the _______.
The stations of the cross, of the heart, of the spade, diamond, club, of the horseshoe, clover, rainbow, rook, bishop, queen, of the grid, of the star, of the hand print, of the phallus, of the invisible man, of the rejected child, of the father, teacher, lover, friend, of the wands, swords, pentacles, cups, of the Occident, of the Southern Hemisphere, of Philly, of the American South, of the Midwest, of the widower, the spirit, of water, air, earth, fire, of acrylic, oil, graphite, watercolor, Flashe, marker.

In all the peek-a-boo intercuts between layers of painting, of neural pathways incised through brushy layers of acrylic, in the several many humbling implosions wherein desires show their more ineffable dimensions, Morgan’s paintings report on the pursuit of a persistently urgent question: whether the most flexible or even fragmentary of epistemologies can be useful for liberation. Is the production of knowledge an expression of freedom? While perhaps not structured quite this way, arguably this is a concern shared by the abstract expressionists and by generations of experimental, process-based artists to follow. Absent a predetermination for what a painting is, what it should do, its design and execution, the gestures comprising a painting of this ilk are an attempt at discovering an underlying apparatus by which the known and the unknown may both be held and made appreciable. In other words, Morgan’s wrangled compositional elements, reworked motifs, refined surfaces, and the compelling interplay found within the scope and history of the practice labor toward one of the most critically important roles for art to serve: epistemological doubt.

The other formal crux of these works that intersects the persistence of maze-like layers is gesture, with the hand, its tool, its speed, wingspan, rattling mortality, and range behaving at some times descriptively and at others deranged, ecstatic, in unmanageable excess.

Lacan’s lectures indicate an absolute unknowability with regard to our desires, our traumas, and even our understanding of the world that faces off with our perceptions. Morgan’s paintings are what happens when one is freed from the futile pursuit of naming and describing those aspects of ourselves that cannot and should not perform that way: all of the energy, joy, anxiety, cathexis, and dancing that holds the space of not knowing.

Without desire predetermined by what one believes he knows of himself, an entirely different territory is marked out beyond logic, morality, law, and close range, intimate means of control.

Morgan's Website

Instagram: @cmorganstudio







What are your beauty secrets?

I have a few secrets but none of them have anything to do with the notion of beauty. Anyway, who sets the standards for beauty? We typically think of beauty externally, which often makes for a shallow/superficial analysis. There’s got to be more to say about beauty besides appearances.



What’s the matter?

This is an awkward/strange question and I’m not entirely sure how to respond. Are you asking if something is “wrong”? If so, why do you assume this to be the situation? For some people, it’s an infuriating question.






What is your greatest extravagance?

Probably buying art and studio supplies comes to mind. Other than that, I would say purchasing books, journals and writing instruments; I am insatiable for these things.



What is your most treasured possession?

My health!






Do you keep a diary?

I intentionally don’t call it a diary because of the connotations it brings to mind. Instead, I engage in making frequent entries into my notebooks. I have been keeping these entries for a little over thirty years. They capture, as best as it can, my thought-life, reflections, ideas, and responses to things I have read. Often I think of my writings as conversations with myself as a way to understand the fragmentary nature of my own personal and creative narrative. It’s a very cathartic practice.



What or who is the greatest love of your life?

My dearly departed Arlene who transitioned from this earth in 2017.






When and where were you happiest?

Although I’m a bit suspicious of the word Happy primarily because of its limited duration, I have felt more or less secure my entire life. My home life in marriage surrounded by our children and observing them grow on many different levels brings warmth to my heart. Now, I have grandchildren and there is something special added to life because of them. Otherwise, I am completely content when I’m working in the studio. The studio is where I feel most myself, free to ponder and access my imagination unapologetically.






What was your first job?

You must be kidding! As a teenager, I had so many different jobs, all of which were temporary, part-time, and not that significant, but necessary in the grand scheme of my growth.



Which living person do you most admire?

This is a common question, but not a good one from my perspective. Every living person has weaknesses and faults. Placing people on a pedestal is not my thing, even those who in my opinion have made incredible music, and works of art and have added significantly to the fabric of public discourse.



If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

First, is this a faith question about reincarnation? If so, I’m not interested. It seems challenging enough to stay alive today, so it’s ridiculous to ponder the circumstances after my demise.






What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

I consider none of the following overrated but they can be hard to live by in this world: Humility, charity, chastity, gratitude, temperance, patience, and diligence.



Do you cook? If no, how do you feed yourself? If yes, do you have a signature recipe?

I enjoy cooking as it is related to art making in many ways. Like art, cooking requires time that I don’t always have. I am no food connoisseur, but I enjoy making things up and not following recipes. My disposition is always open to experimenting.



What did you have for breakfast?

I normally don’t eat breakfast, but coffee is a regular routine.



How do you usually sleep?

Typically in bed and by myself. I am drawn to the night sky and like to gaze out the window from my bed.






What questions are you asking yourself?

I’m still working on figuring out who I really am in this world and how it sees me.



Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

Improvisation, intuition, spontaneity, and impulse are just a few.



Which talent would you most like to have?

In my opinion, talent is overrated. I’d rather have a steady diet of curiosity.



What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Having a role to play in bringing three amazing humans into the world.



Describe your work space. What qualities do you need in your environment to do what you do?

Space is a premium to me. Large open and light-filled space speaks to my senses. Right now storage is an issue but I’m not complaining as long as I have space to paint on multiple things at once. However, workspaces are more than a place to make things. These spaces also function as environments where inexplicable phenomena of the mind can happen.






Describe your dream date.

That is not something that I am concerned with nor does it enter my consciousness.



Where would you most like to live?

Where I currently reside.



Which living person do you most despise?

That question is loaded with negative energy, which is not my thing.



What do you most value in your friends?

The word friend has taken on different meanings over time. In fact, I don’t know what a friend is anymore. Perhaps it’s time for a new word to define such relationships.



What do you most enjoy wearing?

Comfortable clothes, shoes, and baseball caps.



Who are your favorite writers?

The ones that get me thinking.



Do you have a favorite film?

Black & White classic films from the 40s and 50s seem to be the ones I’m drawn to the most. Now that I’m thinking about it, these are the ones with the most imaginative and moving musical scores.



Is there an album or piece of music you listen to the most?

Yes, I have several albums, particular songs, and pieces of music that are meaningful to me. However, my taste in music is somewhat narrow and reflects my cultural and social upbringing. Certain periods and stages of my life have strong connections to particular currents of music that speak to my generation and ethnic background.



What are you reading right now?

1. The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov
2. The Uncertainty Principle
3. Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt



Which historical figure do you most identify with?

For me, history is a suspicious construction, so it doesn’t seem useful to identify anyone.



Is there anything you regret not doing?

Probably not!



Favorite drink?

Water.






Favorite smell?

Nature, infants, and the ocean.



Favorite color?

The truth is always Gray (never Black & White)!



Favorite time of day?

Mornings and sunsets.






Where do you dance?

In my Head mostly.



Do you have anything going on or coming up you want to plug?

Some forthcoming Travel.



Where can people find you? Website address? Instagram handle?

I’m not a big social media person, but I can be found on both if people search hard enough.