About Jacqui Morgan's Journey as a Visual Artist

CONTACT INFO:
E-Mail: JMorgan@nyc.rr.com
Phone: 718 275 5482

JACQUI MORGAN, a native New Yorker, received her BFA from Pratt Institute and her MA from Hunter College, CUNY. Her initial expression, surreal and psychedelic, garnered awards and critical praise nationally and internationally. She received awards from Warsaw Biennale VI and VII, respectively. Work of this period was exhibited in galleries in New York City, Munich and Warsaw, and 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 Switzerland’s Tages Anzeiger, American Artist, Graphis, Print and Novum Gebrauchs Graphik.

Next, her work took an almost destructive turn. Objects became the surface of choice. These included the inner soles of shoes, sofas and upholstered chairs, wig and hat heads, Shovels, hardened clothing and prints of old masters. Eventually, she made her own cast paper heads to assemblage and paint. Embroidery was also explored as an illustration medium. All found their way onto hangtags, album and magazine covers.

In the early 1980s, the work shifted again with the Broadway show poster The Tap Dance Kid into a dimensional realism with exaggerated color, light and shadow. In time, shifting to watercolor from Dyes, her works became juicier and more painterly. 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 done packaging for BIC Corp. (lighters and pens), Nutra-Grain and Kellogs (cereal boxes), Stanley Roberts, Cuisine Cubes, Romertoff, and a line of ‘Naturals” (shampoos, conditioners and sprays) for Alberto Culver VO5.

Jacqui Morgan has illustrated quite a few Science Fiction anthologies, including Children of Infinity and Survival from Infinity. More recently, she illustrated The Healing Garden and Lights Along the Path. Award-winning animated commercials for companies such as Burlington Industries and General Mills are also part of her body of work as are a line of designs for dishware and a line of clothing for her company Mag-Jacs Inc.

In the 1990s, Morgan painted a series of giant watercolors in which the floral forms are more than two feet in diameter. The goal was to capture the essence of birth, life and regeneration. Currently she is pursuing the human form, painting it exclusively from life and discovering new and personal ways to express volume, depth, gesture and color perception. Recent one-person shows include Marywood University, Scranton, PA., Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Society of Illustrators and the Spring Studio, NYC. Jacqui has taught watercolor workshops nationally and abroad and is currently teaching at FIT. She is the author of Watercolor for Illustration and the video series Wet-in-Wet Watercolor Workshop.