Iva Morris
I was born in 1959 and grew up in rural Maryland and West Virginia. My childhood was incredibly
rich in beautiful scenery and a huge, extended family where there were always plenty of cousins to
play with or to get in trouble with, depending on how you look at it. I always wanted to make
pictures, and my mother will attest to the fact that I made plenty of what she called, “My messes!”
I had never really known anyone who made art though, and besides it seemed like dishonest work. I
decided to be practical and at 18 went off to a local teacher’s college and majored in history and
education.
I fully expected to lead a normal and productive life, but then I took a life drawing class. Two years later, married and living in New Mexico, I finished my degree in art education and began a long career in lots of different jobs – none of them having much to do with art. I made and laid adobes, finished and built furniture, waitressed, cleaned houses, worked for a landscaping crew, a mover, built horse jumps, sold antiques, and basically lifted and lugged my way through my twenties and thirties. During those years I had two beautiful children and worked to restore a crumbling white elephant of a house in the farming community of Las Nutrias, New Mexico.
Along the way I made lots of paintings and prints and got involved in the New Mexico Artist In Residence Program. My paintings often take months to complete and employ traditional techniques, using an underpainting and multiple layers of glaze. I usually work from life or staged photos in a studio filled with dogs, kids, and chaos.
My degree in art education has helped me to design an integrated art program for a local school district where I teach grades K-12 part-time. Many artists and members of our community participate in this program. Despite my own success as an artist, teaching kids and making art with them is just about the most satisfying and successful thing I have ever done. I guess that a comment made by artist Andrew Wyeth pretty much sums up my ideas about art: “Art is nothing more than the place where you live and the people that you love.”
Morris is represented by Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM, Matrix Fine Art, Alb., NM, and Billy Shire Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA.
