Jacqui Morgan
A native New Yorker, with a BFA from Pratt Institute and MA from Hunter College, CUNY, Jacqui Morgan’s initial visual expression, executed in a surreal and psychedelic mode, garnered awards and praise nationally and internationally. She exhibited and received awards at the Warsaw Poster Biennale VI and VII, respectively. Work of this period was exhibited in galleries in New York City, Munich and Warsaw, and her posters are part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Best know of these are The Electric Circus of 1967, The Joy of Seeing, 1973, for the American Optometric Association, and the Sansui poster series. Magazine covers of this period include the Tages Anzeiger, (Switzerland) American Artist, Graphis, Print and Novum Gebrauchs Graphik (Germany).
The decade following her debut as a world-class poster artist saw her work take an almost destructive turn. Objects became the surface of choice such as her sofas and upholstered chairs, inner soles of shoes and boots, hardened brassieres, wig and hat heads, shovels, and old master prints. Eventually, she cast paper heads to assemblage and paint describing, via world culture, her vision of the human drive to self-decorate.
In the early 1980s, her work shifted again with the Broadway show poster The Tap Dance Kid executed with a dimensional realism in exaggerated color, light and shadow. In time, moving to watercolor from dyes, her works became more risk taking and painterly. The line around her forms disappeared. In this mode, Morgan did covers for Land’s End, Wine Spectator and Eddie Bauer Home, among others. Clients included most of the Fortune 500 companies, Thai Airlines, Mikimoto Cosmetics and Yukijurushi Co. She has created packaging for BIC Corp. (lighters and pens), Nutra-Grain and Kelloggs (cereal boxes), Stanley Roberts, Cuisine Cubes (Quaker Oats), Romertoff, and a line of ‘Naturals” (shampoos, conditioners and sprays) for Alberto Culver VO5.
Morgan has illustrated a number of Science Fiction anthologies, including Children of Infinity and Survival from Infinity. Subsequently, she illustrated G.P.Alleman’sThe Healing Garden and Rebecca Schacht’s Lights Along the Path. Award-winning animated commercials for Burlington Industries and General Mills are also part of her body of work as are a line of designs for Reco dishware and clothing for Mag-Jacs Inc.
In the 1990s, she painted a series of giant watercolors with floral forms at least two feet in diameter, to capture the essence of birth, life and regeneration. One-person shows of this work showed at Marywood University, Scranton, PA. and the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois. She is the author of Watercolor for Illustration (Watson Guptill) and the video series Wet-in-Wet Watercolor Workshop.
Recent shows of her “Nudes” were presented at the Society of Illustrators and Spring Studio, NYC. She is now painting the human form exclusively from life and is playing with color perception and how it helps create the illusion of volume. She also tricks our eyes into seeing negative space as positive and positive as negative. Jacqui has taught watercolor workshops nationally and abroad and is currently teaching at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Mostly Nude contains a selection of works done from 2005 through 2010.
