Collector’s Preview: Thursday, November 4, 6-8pm
Opening Reception: Friday, November 5, 6-9pm (in conjunction with Oakland Art Murmur)
Artists’ Talk: Saturday, November 6, 2pm
In Night and Day, East Bay painter Jamie Morgan presents dynamic images from the urban and industrial landscape. His subjects include freeway ramps, gas stations, and buildings, all chosen to define a sense of place and time. Jamie uses his own photographs as sources for compositions, focusing on the qualities of light and color to complete them. “Sometimes taking photographs is miraculous, when everything is in the right place at the right time, says Morgan. “Other times the process is like mining for ore, following a vein, digging deeper and coming back to the same spot many times to finally hit the mother lode.” Morgan also revisits scenes captured years ago at night, drawn by the simplicity, contrast and minimal light, but employing a newly found use of color developed in recent years working with day-lit scenes.
Jamie Morgan was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He developed his artistic interests in high school, and continued to pursue them while majoring in Classics at Stanford. Subsequently he applied his talent to mural making and community art. It was during this period that he developed a penchant for realism. He refined his skills through study at California College of Arts and Crafts, where he earned his M.F.A. He has exhibited at Barclay Simpson Fine Arts Gallery (Lafayette, CA), Bartlett Fine Arts Gallery (Pleasanton, CA), the Collectors Gallery (Oakland, CA), Hang (San Francisco), and the Greenlining Institute (Berkeley, CA), as well as numerous invitational shows, including the California Society of Printmakers. In 1996, he was awarded a grant from the Creative Work Fund to create a mural for Laguna Honda Hospital. Kala Art Institute granted him an Artist Fellowship in 1999, which afforded him six months of time and equipment to focus on color etchings and monoprints, and resulted in a show at the Institute. In 2003 and 2006, he completed murals for the Alameda County Art Commission. His work is part of the collection of Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA, as well as numerous private collections.
