Clarence Morgan

My written and visual work develops in a hodge-podge fashion, like collage. I group, assemble or compose intuitively rather than theoretically or formally. Within this loose framework I find my various inclinations freely feed off each other. In the process of working with either paint or words, my behavior is mediated by reactions that seem just below the level of consciousness. Thus, while working I am prompted by a multitude of internal and external sources that provide bits and pieces of information to be extracted for creative consumption. Perhaps my inability to remain focused on one particular thought or idea might explain my aptitude, impulse or capacity to work in such a disjointed manner. One advantage of collage is the wonderful capacity to suspend final judgment, which allows the possibility for other aesthetic considerations to take root and sanctions the co-mingling of disparate information from arbitrary sources.

This collage process is tangibly visible in the Artist Book I recently completed in collaboration with Ken Botnick of Emdash Press. Ken, who provided the majority of the technical assistance, is an Associate Professor in the School of Art at Washington University at St. Louis where he teaches in the Department of Visual Communication.

From the beginning - in 1994 - I thought of the project as a meditation on abstraction, the nature of painting, reflection, and the mutability of thought itself - all of which was rooted in my notebooks and sketchbooks. Ken edited my sketchbooks and rearranged them into an order that implies a loosely structured narrative relative to the creative process in general and my studio methods as a painter in particular. We culled from the sketchbooks my writings, reflections, diagrams, drawings, quotations and dispersed philosophic commentary, which became the basis for the project.
While thinking about how I wanted to approach a discussion about this Artist Book, I realized that the most important aspects of the project were the discussions and sequencing of ideas, including what they revealed about the apparatus of thinking behind the project itself. I also realized how this process serves as a portrait of my work's evolution over the decades. I have come to understand that change, especially change in the basic assumptions about thought itself, occurs slowly in one instance and promptly without warning in another. I am reminded of the unpredictability of thought and our personal response to these constantly shifting impulses.

As such, I have become painfully aware of the importance of patience in the creative process. In addition to teaching me about patience, the Artist Book confirmed the importance of preparation - the kind of preparation that conditions the psyche of the artist to be malleable in thought and response. I am just beginning to understand how to remain fluid and sensitive to the awkwardness of my own thinking and responses. Working on the book allowed me to take chances and openly accept momentary discomfort, especially during the collaborative process. This preparation is crucial in dealing with the constant changes that force me to negotiate and renegotiate new terms as the work evolves.

The Artist Book has opened new territories of thinking about a broad range of things, but especially the relationship between writing and the thought process. Gathered from journal entries, observations, conversations and appropriated passages from other sources, the writings and notes are only modestly personal and thereby function more as a record of my stray thoughts and meanderings. As a visual artist, I tend to reside in a world of retrospection, and I second-guess my own inclinations. For many this would be agony, but for me it is comforting and oddly reassuring.

It seems I am most comfortable when surrounded by material clutter and paper. Words and images are everywhere in my life and have been for a long time. In my work writing has functioned primarily, in the past, to record isolated, random and fragmentary thoughts obliquely related to painting. Now I am drawn to the conceptual framing of writing as a tangible expression of thought. I'm intrigued with the ways it might contribute to the practice of art making. Very appealing to me is the idea of painting, writing and the structuring of thought all conspiring to form a unique cognitive apparatus.

Perhaps writing has a function similar to maps. However, instead of locating fixed coordinates, writing serves to point out other ways of experiencing ourselves in the world. The introspective nature of writing and the mulling over of things in my mind seem conducive to the temperament of someone who paints abstractly. This pondering of things is not the kind of obsessive thinking that attempts to figure things out or the type of staged deep contemplation that deals with the solving of a specific problem. Instead, I am referring to the contemplative cycle of the creative process where the mind is more or less encouraged to wonder aimlessly from subject to subject and where words, images and sensorial fragments make unexpected alliances.