Central Louisiana Artist Elizabeth P. Morgan Shares Love of Art

“I paint and draw stuff.” It’s quite an understatement, but that’s how Central Louisiana artist Elizabeth P. Morgan describes her growing and successful art career. She has come a long way since her grandfather gave her a set of watercolors when she was 12 years old. Now, the Shreveport native belongs to some of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious national art societies, such as the Salmagundi Club in New York, and her paintings have been included in prestigious juried art shows and featured in top national art publications.

That journey in art has taken her from the backroads and farmland of North and Central Louisiana to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and to the mountains of Tennessee and Wyoming. But most importantly, she continues to expand the landscapes of her imagination as she sits each day before her easel.

In paintings such as “Lock and Dam” and “Soul Food” in Central Louisiana and in “Lupine Meadows Road” and “National Elk Refuge” in Wyoming, viewers witness part of that journey. Her still lifes, as in her painting of a violin in “Hanging on by a Thread,” are subtle with a polished touch.

“The world of art is infinite,” Morgan says, “and I’m passionately committed to being a lifelong student of art and dedicated to the preservation of art in its most truthful form. Years ago, I decided that to grow in art I needed to release my fear of failure and try new things and explore so that I could build knowledge upon my failures. Art is a humbling thing and I fail daily as I keep showing up to my easel for my next lesson. I love every moment of the process of creating and getting lost in the zone.”

That “every moment” is inspired, she says, by “nature, music, people, places and many other things that inspire me to create” as she continues to search her “heart to find the thing that really moves and captivates me.”

Those moments began early in her life. Growing up in Bienville Parish, Morgan loved to draw. As a child, she drew everything from the women in her mother’s dress patterns to the farmhouses and livestock she saw on long family drives though the countryside. When she was 13, her mother signed her up for art classes conducted by a local painter in Jonesboro. At first, he didn’t want children in his class, but later, at the urging of adults in the course, admitted her after she successfully passed his test of drawing a lamp and a Coca-Cola can.

Morgan’s professional career began not in fine arts but as an interior designer. She and her husband Jeff, who now reside on their family farm in Ruby, Louisiana, just north of Alexandria, are both graduates of Louisiana Tech in Ruston. There, she studied architecture and interior design and experimented with watercolors. She also was part of a group of students who documented with drawings the architecture of Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches Parish for the Historic American Buildings Survey now on file at the Library of Congress. She later used those skills to design home kitchens and baths.

After college, she and her husband moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast where they remained until 2005 when Hurricane Katrina drove them to the Upper Cumberland area of Tennessee. In 2014, they returned to Louisiana. All the while, she continued to paint and show her work.

Like many artists, especially landscape artists, Morgan enjoys painting and drawing studies from life on location, or en plein air as it’s called in the art world. She then uses those studies to create larger works back in her studio. Plein air painters claim working on location gives them a better feel for the light, shadows and atmosphere surrounding the subjects they are painting.

“Light and shadow,” she says, “have always been something that I’ve been enamored with, especially the turning of shapes and how light and shadow create these beautiful forms.”

Morgan, who prefers to paint on primed linen panels that she herself makes, describes her work as “representational in the form of realism,” though, as she says, “I do occasionally toggle into an impressionistic style.”

Although paintings are often the final result of her work, drawing remains essential in her process. She describes it as “part of her creative rhythm.” On her easels, she has written the words “Build the house before you paint the walls.” It’s a reminder, she says, to “draw, draw, draw and then paint.”

Whether Morgan is painting a flowering meadow in Wyoming or a decaying smokehouse on her farm or a barge on the Red River in Louisiana, she hopes “to keep learning and growing and sharing the love of art as long as I can.”

That’s truly “getting lost in the zone.”

For additional information, visit ipaintanddrawstuff.com

Exhibits

Cajun | Sitting with George Rodrigue
A retrospective of Rodrigue’s art, through July 13. Hilliard University Art Museum, Lafayette.  hilliardmuseum.org

Central | Enduring Concepts: People, Place, Spirituality, & Emotion
Recurring themes in the museum’s collection, permanent exhibit. Alexandria Museum of Art. themuseum.org   

Plantation | Mitoloji Latannyèr/Mythologies Louisianaises
Explores French, Creole and Tunica languages of Louisiana through art and storytelling, through December. Capitol Park Museum, Baton Rouge. louisianastate-museum.org

NOLA | Rebellious Spirits: Prohibition and Resistance in the South
New Orleans, the South and Prohibition, through Jan. 5. New Orleans Museum of Art. noma.org

North | The River is the Road: Paintings by George Rodrigue
Rodrigue’s use of the river as a metaphor for his Cajun heritage, through Oct. 19. Masur Museum of Art, Monroe. masurmuseum.org