Web Analytics

FREE Shipping & Gallery Wrap Stretching on Canvas Prints   

up to 44in x 3Oin size shipped within USA

 

 

As a boy, I discovered my identity through making things. There is a special magic in seeing and making things for the first time. It is precious to stay this way, because it is the doorway to originality. It is almost impossible not to be corrupted by knowledge and success and to retain one’s identity. For me, painting is the highest form of making and becoming a real person. My paintings today come from this original seeing and making.

 

In 1965, while in college, I discovered Acrylics and began using them. I had been trained in oils and continued painting in oils until I graduated from college. All the while, I was still experimenting with acrylics. Hardly anyone used them, as they had only been available for use less than ten years. My professors could not truly advise me. I had to teach myself. With the slow drying of oils, blending and modeling the paint were the basic skills to master. Although I was able to demonstrate this ability, I discovered that the acrylic paint had a much broader range. I could do more things with it because it dried very fast. Other students preferred the familiarity of oil paint.

 

While oils are an opaque oil based medium, acrylics are translucent and water based. I discovered that the acrylic was still translucent, no matter how dense the paint was applied. This means you can still see through it - layer after layer of color. Instead of blending and modeling as with oils, I realized that glazing was the key to acrylic as well as its greatest strength. It would have been possible to attempt this technique with oils but the drying time is longer and varnish is used for glazing. The use of varnish would lead to cracking in time. Acrylic was more practical, flexible and immediate; it would not crack.

 

Modeling and blending with acrylic merely mimicked oil painting. I wanted this acrylic paint to produce an entirely different way of making a painting. I began experimenting with mixed color glazes and glazed over shapes that were more opaque. The colors, shapes and glazes took on a life of their own and generated new ways of conveying form and spirit. I was instructed by what was happening before me.

 

Eventually, the paintings developed a subtle luminosity. To enhance this, a different type of gesso was necessary. I was taught that the chalky type of gesso that most artists use was best. The colors had to “sink in” to this gesso. Why is this so, I asked myself. With acrylic, it only tended to dull the color, keeping it from displaying its own purity. Instead, I formulated my own gesso that is luminous and extremely white. The color floats yet anchors to it. This luminous gesso, underneath, yields an inner light to the glazes above. Over time, with this technique, it became possible to produce colors and color tones that could not be mixed. It was magic!

 

It is not my intention to produce bright colors or colorful paintings. The paintings are made from the inside out, rather than the outside in. Because of this, you see first hand the energy, spirit and inner light that exists in the world. The child in us recognizes this and is refreshed by it. If you are like-minded, you will realize it is not only the world that we see but also the source.

 

 

Artist Statement

 

 

 

Welcome to A gallery of 178 Acrylic Paintings, Digigraphs, Digital Woodcuts and Giclée Prints.

 

There are a total of six different themed galleries on this website:

Bostonscapes, Maritime, Naturescapes, Mini Paintings of New England, Early Works & a Variety New England Art gallery.

 

If you have arrived at this page first, please use the text links at the top or bottom of this page to view our extensive online galleries of fine art.

 

Morton Arts, a successful creative studio founded in 1997 by artists James Morton and Sara Morton. ​Foremost, it is an online gallery to promote and sell original paintings, giclée prints, original digigraphs & digital woodcuts. Over the years, the business has progressively unfolded into a variety of creative facets.

 

Morton Arts has been producing Fine Art Giclée prints for sixteen years. Art dealers, galleries, corporations and individuals recognize the outstanding professional quality of their Giclée prints.

 

Thank you for the millions of international visits we have received these past seventeen years! Also, thank you for all of the kind letters, requests and strong interest in the paintings, digital woodcuts, digigraphs and Giclée prints. Please continue to visit and keep in touch .

 

Many Thanks- James and Sara Morton

 

Morton

   Arts

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 1970 - 2020 James Morton

All images contained herein are copyrighted and remain the property of James Morton.

Images may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the artist.

 

Wesbite Design & Graphics by Morton Arts

MortonArts.com - online since 1997